Marilyn Monroe: American history in miniature

Marilyn Monroe’s final interview is a heartbreaker. Published in Life magazine on August 3, 1962—just a day before the actress died of a barbiturate overdose at age 36—it found Monroe reflecting on her celebrity status, alternatively thoughtful, frank and witty. “When you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way,” she observed. “It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she—who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe?” That same question—who was the real Monroe?—has sparked debate among cinema scholars, cultural critics, historians, novelists, filmmakers and the general public for decades. Was “Marilyn,” the personality and persona brought to life by the star’s real self, Norma Jeane Mortenson? Or was she simply a manufactured Hollywood image? Film historian Michelle Vogel, author of Marilyn Monroe: Her Films, Her Life, echoes this view. “I don’t think there was a ‘real’ Marilyn Monroe,” says Vogel in an interview. “She was a character and a persona to be played, both on and off the screen. At the heart of it all, Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane. When she acted a part, it was Norma Jeane, playing Marilyn Monroe, playing said role. That's not easy.”

Cultural historian Sarah Churchwell, meanwhile, contends in The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe that “Marilyn Monroe is not best understood as only an image, or as an ‘artificial creation of a woman.’ Something that is not natural can still be real: It has been made. One of the questions the stories about Marilyn’s life beg, therefore, is how much any of us is natural, whether any identity is not made.” “In junior high, I was completely movie-struck,” she said in a 1951 interview. “I used to see movies I liked three or four times when I could afford it.” She fantasized that the “King of Hollywood”, Clark Gable, was her missing father, and she aspired to be just like the blonde bombshell Jean Harlow when she grew up. Narratives of Monroe’s life, mostly based on fiction, tend to focus on her trauma at the expense of her hard work and dedication. The myths surrounding her life have obscured what originally helped make her famous: her craft as an actress. Still, Monroe prevailed. Her natural beauty helped her get through the door, but it was her hard work that cemented her rise to superstardom. “She had a drive to better herself by reading books on psychology, philosophy, poetry, art, drama,” says Vogel. “She studied at the prestigious Actors Studio in New York, with Lee Strasberg, because she had the desire to be a drama student, even after she was already a famous Hollywood actress. She was a trailblazer, and in many ways a feminist before the term was really known or understood.” 

In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)—the quintessential Monroe film—she proved herself to be a triple-threat talent, dazzling her audiences with her singing and dancing as much as she made them laugh. “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is one of film’s most famous scenes for good reason: The “Blowtorch Blonde,” as she was dubbed by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, absolutely steals the show. Monroe was notoriously difficult to work with, as she was constantly late to shoots and often flubbed her lines. But she was no diva. “In reality, she had severe stage fright,” says Vogel. “She was a nervous wreck filming scenes, often breaking out into a rash or being physically ill at the thought of performing.” Monroe’s career soared as her romantic life floundered, with two successive husbands failing to understand the woman she wanted to be. Baseball hero Joe DiMaggio balked at the sexuality of his wife’s public image. Playwright Arthur Miller was annoyed by her cult of celebrity. An old journal reveals the depth of Monroe’s grief: “I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.”  “The Hollywood studio system would often create fictitious back-stories and cover-up scandals for their stars, but Marilyn was different,” says Vogel. “She was open and honest about her dysfunctional childhood, so there was a very real, flawed, human element about her that made the public relate and fall in love with her.” Monroe also took steps to fight back against the studio system. 

Forced to take roles she considered beneath her, the actress decided to break her restrictive contract with Fox in 1954 and start her own production company—Marilyn Monroe Productions—on the East Coast. Though Fox tried to blackball Monroe, she emerged victorious, renegotiating a studio contract that afforded her both a higher salary and creative control over her future roles. “She strove for equality and change to the Hollywood system, and she got it,” says Vogel. Monroe biographer Lois Banner perhaps encapsulates the star’s allure best: "In the case of Marilyn, people believe what they want to believe. She lives in the fantasies of the national imagination, enshrined in a story with endless possibilities, plots, characters and events. Marilyn’s life and death have become flexible, plastic representations of a real person. No one can deny the power of her representation: She is the star who has most haunted the American imagination." We should care about Monroe because of how much she cared about us, her audience. Her films enliven her myth but also remind us of the person she was. Yes, her life was a tragedy, but it was also a triumph. She was American history in miniature. Source: www.smithsonianmag.com