Today, at this late hour, perhaps as a result of my own long-accumulating internal turmoil (blogs tend to be about the self in some way or another, aren’t they?), I find myself gravitating towards the figure of Marilyn Monroe, and filled with a combination of feelings for her that I have never felt towards her in this particular manner: acute sadness, sympathy, empathy, and unceasing pain. Normally: the thought of Marilyn conjures up the blonde siren in the iconic bright pink dress, surrounded by odd-looking men carrying kitsch red heart-fans, and with her running up and down the red-carpeted steps and singing Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend in Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Sparking with diamonds, of course.
Or I would think of her in the even more iconic ivory pleated tulle dress, blowing up in the wind from the grate at the subway in a still taken from a scene in Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955). Just last year (2011) this famous pose was concretised as ‘Forever Marilyn’, a 26-foot-tall sculpture by Seward Johnson on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Michigan Avenue, and the actual dress that Monroe worn for the film sold for $4.6 million at an auction for Hollywood costumes and props collected by Debbie Reynolds. [1] However, possibly like most people, I just know the picture – I am still to see the film or the sculpture or the dress.
Or more associations still… when I think of Marilyn I would see her as the charming and endearing Sugar ‘Kane’ Kowalczyk, the ‘all-girl’ band vocalist in Billy Wilder’s later film, Some Like it Hot (1959). Her rendition of I Wanna be Loved by You whilst dressed in a backless and almost see-through lace costume is hypnotic, inviting, sexy. I wanna be loved by you, just you/Nobody else but you/I wanna be loved by you, alone – sang in almost a whispering tone, perhaps purred, but simply charmed in its seeming effortlessness and easy sensuality. That same sensuality that Michelle Williams adorably captured in her portrayal of Monroe in the recent film My Week with Marilyn (2011) directed by Simon Curtis. Clearly: 2011 was Marilyn’s year. Anyway, if the over 2 million views on YouTube for that Some Like it Hot scene are not a useful testament to the scene’s enduring appeal, I’m not sure what is:
Here is this woman, one of the most recognisable of women in 20th century Western popular history, very beautiful (of course), at the top of her game in possibly one of the meanest industries in America, and yet… in full public view – breaking down. Complaining of exhaustion. Taking too many days off work. Work looming nonetheless, overwhelming. Shortly before her death she had been fired by Fox Studios from the set of the last film she was to ever make and never finish, Something’s Gotta Give. For 17 of the 30 shooting days she had called in sick, and cost the company massive amounts of money for the delay in production costs. After a massive scandal, a looming and feasible threat that her career in Hollywood might be over, and then after being re-hired, she was found dead two days later possibly from a suicide by overdose of sleeping pills. (Her physician, however, maintains that an overdose of the amount of pills he had prescribed for her would not have been sufficient.) If suicide, exact reason why: unknown.
All sorts of other things were at play: for one, time passing; the actress known to the whole world for her dazzling beauty, now just past 36, and perhaps growing anxious that in time other youthful purrers will soon replace her. Going out while still at the top. Others: unsuccessful and possibly damaging psychoanalytical treatment. Obviously, depression. Insomnia – hence the sleeping pills. Unsatisfying and increasingly risqué sexual and love relations (if this is the right term) with strangers. Unsuccessful marriages behind her, but still no sense of being ‘at home’ in the world. Some blame the Kennedys. Others the mafia. Some say the mafia in order to spite the Kennedy brothers. Either way, in this woman we have an illustrative case of fame and money not buying you happiness. Whatever the cause, headlines such as ‘MARILYN DEAD’ on 5 August 1962 left the world stunned; of all things that could have happened that day, the death of Monroe (especially by sucide) was the amongst the least expected.
In the documentary Marilyn’s Last Moments about Monroe’s unfinished film, Monroe’s physician, Hyman Engelberg, M.D., says after her death he had received “several phone calls from ordinary women. The general feeling was if they had only known Marilyn was in trouble, they would have done everything they could to help her.” From this rather sad helplessness and irrational sorrow and empathy most people must have felt at her death – and what I, years later, am possibly feeling now – Engleberg draws the rather ludicrous-sounding (but profound) conclusion that “Marilyn didn’t just have appeal for men; women were aware of the lost little girl inside of her and they reacted to that.”[2]
Put differently: women (like the men) loved her too; they saw her as this great happy woman onto whom they could project their fantasies about themselves; the iconic image of the happy, perfect life, only to be shocked that all or most was veneer – behind the picture was a vulnerable, deeply unhappy woman who just wanted someone to save her because he had no ability or time to do so herself. But no one realised that and so no one came to the rescue or with the appropriate methods (everyone gave the love they could but it was the wrong kind of love). Worse: everybody wanted something from her but no one took the time to think she too might need something (love, care, perhaps affection) from somebody. So afterwards, everybody, but particularly other women, felt bad about it and called her doctor to set the record straight. The whole thing is just so sad. So sad.
Of course there is no ground for comparison, but her life is instructive – even if in the negative. Today I feel for her because, selfishly and childishly, I suppose, because there is an element of her experience that makes some kind of sense to me, finally, and those last days make sense somehow, finally. I suppose if I knew her this would be the time when I’d say “Marilyn, sweet bird you were, I miss you today.”
Ella Fitzgerald: "I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally called the owner of the Mocambo [a popular upmarket, celebrity-frequented but racist nightclub], and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.”[3]
Photo credits: Main picture © George Barris, 1962. Film stills © 20th Century Fox, I suppose. Monroe with Fitzgerald © unknown.
[1] http://www.toledoblade.com/Art/2011/07/15/Huge-Marilyn-sculpture-unveiled.html
[2] For the relevant extract from the film see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfuaBhTslQ&feature=relmfu
