WEIRDLAND: Edie Sedgwick: Underground Marilyn Monroe

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Edie Sedgwick: Underground Marilyn Monroe

Scarlett Johansson and Jake Gyllenhaal at the MTV Movie Awards, on 5th June 5, 2004.
"Scarlett Johansson is denying comparisons to the late Marilyn Monroe, and is insisting she shares very little with the former screen star. Johansson was compared to Monroe after an advertising campaign for Dolce & Gabbana was revealed last month, in which the actress poses seductively across silk bedsheets wearing just a corset. But Scarlett is adamant she wasn’t trying to channel Monroe in the sexy photos. She explains, "We really weren’t trying to recreate any particular image. It was just their idea of the iconic blonde, and naturally people think that’s Marilyn Monroe. "Having said that, I love Marilyn. I think she was incredibly beautiful and a very underrated actress. I am a curvy woman who is blonde, and perhaps we are both comfortable in our femininity, but I think that is as far as the comparison goes."
Source: www.theinsider.com




"Beauty No. 2 premiered at the Cinematheque on July 17th and her onscreen appearance was compared to Marilyn Monroe's. As a result of her popularity, she was getting a lot of advice from people to leave Andy and become a proper star. One of the people advising Edie was Bobby Neuwirth who has been described as "Bob Dylan's right-hand man". Source: www.warholstars.org

"Edie's presence was magnetic, remembers John Cale, co-founder of The Velvet Underground who had a six-week affair with her. "Although desperate and on her last legs with Andy, she still possessed all the elemental magic, frayed beauty and presence of Marilyn Monroe." Source: www.independent.co.uk

"There seemed to be this almost supernatural glow to her that's hard to describe," wrote playwright Robert Heide. "Literally there was an aura emanating from her, a white or blue aura. It's as if Edie was illuminated from within. Her skin was translucent — Marilyn Monroe had that quality."In early 1965, Edie, who had just dropped out of art school, met pop artist Warhol at a party. "His x-ray spex saw through to her core and recognized there was a quark of great charm and spin," writes Dalton. "As a collector of damaged and luminous souls, he wanted to capture this rare creature on film.""She was just enchanting, and we were all in love with her," said journalist Danny Fields. "But you knew she was such damaged goods by the time we found her."
Both Sienna Miller and Kate Moss have been responsible for bringing back the Sedgwick style recently — tights, boots, minidresses and chunky jewelry.

"All those girls are Edie prototypes," Dalton said. "The fascinating, doomed temptress that you can't resist". 
Source: www.mtv.com

"In the pantheon of American mythology, Sedgwick was one of the Tragic Muses, those women who did not so much make things happen as stand still and allow things to happen to them. Zelda Fitzgerald was one, Marilyn Monroe another.Edie Sedgwick as Susan in "Ciao! Manhattan".
Natalie Portman photographed as the Factory's star.

"Ciao! Manhattan" is ultimately a testament to the odd, elastic nature of the '60s. The juxtaposition of Ciao!'s images illustrates more than the black-and-white/color, East Coast/West Coast dichotomies of its surface. It also shows just how fleeting and disposable were youth and glamour and La Dolce Vita in an age that supposedly prized those elements the most. That's what Warhol meant when he tossed off his greatly misinterpreted saw about everyone being famous for 15 minutes -- not simply that all of us will experience fame, but that the nature of fame is to use people up and spit them out in short, perfunctory order. In the end, Edie understood this and left us this assortment of before-and-after pictures as her epitaph".
Source: www.popmatters.com


8 comments :

countsheep said...

Marilyn Monroe is still a genuine sex-symbol. Great post!

Elena said...

I think so many actresses have imitated Marilyn is really unconscious by most of them.
I have a huge fascination for Edie Sedgwick too, I'm in a Edie-mania phase right now!

Anonymous said...

Edie Sedgwick was without a doubt the underground Marilyn Monroe. They both had an interesting, fascinating, unique quality, which made a big impression on everyone - and still does.

Their alluring way of speaking, made people listen, and their fragility and vulnerability, made people feel a strangly compelling, deeply emotionel, connection to them - and still does.

They both danced to their own tune and created their own identity and reality. The creation of their persona and image, was their art-form, and is what made them both an instant, longlasting success.

They may only have had 15 minutes of fame, but their art influenced, not only a whole generation, but our entire culture, society and future generations.

Although we are often reminded of Edie Sedgwick's and Marilyn Monroe's troubled private lives, their lasting legacy and what they will always be remembered by, is in the end, their individuality. God bless them.

Anonymous said...

Brittany Murphy possessed the same qualities.

Elena said...

^^ very true about Brittany

Levitra said...

well there's a few person who can be called sex symbols, Marylin Monroe is one of then, to me there's not a women who beat that mysterious beauty.

Anonymous said...

Marilyn Monroe = Sex symbol.

Edie Sedgwick = Fashion icon.

Anonymous said...

Brittany Murphy = Free spirit.