Marilyn Monroe was born 91 years ago today. She
died 36 years later, and for the most part, it is that which people focus on. After all, we love scandals and mysteries, and this was both. Was it suicide? Was it
murder? Who did it? Much later, when the scumbag Richard Saltzar wrote a bunch of mostly-unsubstantiated 'revelations', came further questions - Were the Kennedys involved? Was she really sleeping with
the President? Even the song at the head of this post, superb though it is, glorifies
her death more than her life, though Elton John certainly seemed to give a lot
more feeling to ‘Goodbye Norma Jean’ than he ever
gave to “Goodbye England’s Rose.”
What we forget in all the fetishization of her
death, unfortunately, is the fact that she lived.
In a short career, mostly confined to stereotypical
'brainless beauty' roles, Marilyn brought to the screen a combination of
vulnerability and sensuality that has been repeatedly imitated but never
successfully emulated.
'Miss Cheesecake, 1951'. Apparently, that was a thing. |
She's someone we mostly know from pictures rather
than movies, with the posters and publicity shots hanging on walls all over the
world, whether it's the Seven-year-itch billowing white dress, or the Golden
Globes Gold Gown, or the Kennedy Birthday 'stitched-on' dress, or even one of those
with nothing on but 'Chanel Number 5'. Beautiful as they are, and well worthy
of their ornamental use, they are still images, frozen in time, as her story
would be when she died.
But the thing is, she lived.
In 'All About
Eve', a role that we would call 'blink-and-you-miss-it’, in a movie that features Bette Davis, Anne Baxter
and Thelma Ritter, where it was still impossible to not remember the stunning blonde poppet on George Sanders’ arm, she lived.
In Niagara,
playing a classic femme fatale, a
supporting role which got her ‘noticed’, crooning the words to the song ‘Kiss’ and dressed for the most part in bright pink or
red, and looking like a woman men would not just die for, but kill for, and
in-movie, did, she lived.
In Seven Year
Itch, credited just as ‘the girl’, with the billowing skirt and mixing potato chips
with champagne, she lived.
In Don’t Bother to
Knock, and in River of No Return, in The
Misfits and The Prince and the
Showgirl, she lived.
But the movies that one should watch, if for
nothing else than to understand why she captured a nation’s imagination, are Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes and Some Like it Hot.
She plays a fairly
stereotypical showgirl in both movies, but the delight is in the way she brings
those roles to life. The breathless whisper, the walk, the wide-eyed wonder,
the laugh…everything that seems terribly fake when others try, seems natural on
her. Her comic timing is superb, her personality effervescent without ever
being slutty, and when Joe Brown (as Osgood) says at the end of the latter to
Jack Lemmon (Jerry), ‘Nobody’s Perfect’, you want to shoot back, ‘Except Marilyn’.
But narratives are crafted
in a different way. Tragedy and scandal sell, not nuance, so we choose to
remember her either as a brainless sex-toy or a tragic figure, both of which
fail to capture the essence of Norma Jean.
It was no mere brainless
bimbo who could break out of a childhood with a psychotic mother, childhood sex
abuse and poverty. The library of
over 400 books she left behind, most with her handwritten notes inscribed on
the pages (for those who doubt that she actually read), indicate a far more
intellectual personality than the one she earned fame by portraying. And what’s forgotten often, is that when
she flat-out refused to do yet another dumb blonde role in Pink Tights, she did more to break Hollywood’s pernicious ‘Studio system’ than anyone else had till then.
As for tragedy, there are enough
days in a year to remember the abuse, the affairs, the miscarriages, the
slander she suffered even after her death, the exploitation and the mental
issues. She was no epitome of innocence, and in the intersection of the greed of those who surrounded her and her own ambition, a lot happened that could have been avoided.
Today, let’s remember that she lived. In glorious technicolour and subtle black-and-white, she lived. And while she did, she was magnificent.
Today, let’s remember that she lived. In glorious technicolour and subtle black-and-white, she lived. And while she did, she was magnificent.
Fuck, this is beautiful, man.
ReplyDeleteThanks mate.
DeleteThis was good!
ReplyDelete