Marilyn Monroe's myths reconstructed in "Blonde"

In Dominik’s eyes, Marilyn Monroe is a weirdo artist, a clever and experimental mind who was thwarted by things beyond her control, poor mental health and the Hollywood system, mostly. But as much as Dominik seems to appreciate Monroe on those merits, he eventually puts her through a nightmarish ordeal leading to her death that is  harrowing and relentless (and, eventually, tiresome) on film. Ana de Armas can’t do much to conceal her Cuban accent as she approximates Monroe’s breathy vocal melodiousness. Unfortunately, she lacks the necessary nuance which is far off her reach. We don’t necessarily get to know the reality of Monroe here; the movie offers precious little of her at work, or in her social element. It’s pretty much all pain, all the time, crafting a vivid and frightening picture of the madness of fame. 

Throughout her numerous travails, Monroe conceives and then loses several babies, either by coerced abortion or miscarriage. That becomes a heavy emotional throughline in the film, as does Monroe’s yearning to know her father, whom she’s never met but idolizes nonetheless. Dominik explores several noted film productions (Don’t Bother to Knock, Niagara, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot are all attenuated through interesting moments) and significant license is taken when examining her more famous romantic, troubled relationships. And it's especially insulting the portrait of Joe DiMaggio and President John F Kennedy as abusive chauvinists. In May, Christie’s sold Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn portrait of the actress for a staggering $195 million. It is the most expensive 20th-century artwork to ever sell at auction. In the summer, Madame Tussauds installed a wax sculpture of the film legend at the Lexington Hotel, a place Marilyn and her husband Joe DiMaggio once called their home. In 2020, Forbes listed Monroe as the 13th-highest-paid dead celebrity, raking in $13 million her estate earned the year prior. The outlet reported that her likeness was officially licensed by nearly 100 brands globally, including Dolce & Gabbana, Zales, and Lego Group. 

As art historian Gail Levin told PBS’ American Masters about Monroe, “She could, arguably, be the most-photographed person of the 20th century.” By her own admission, the woman she presented onscreen to the American public was just the façade of a glamorous sex bomb Hollywood decided to market her as, not the insecure Norma Jeane Baker who grew up in a string of foster homes. A persona that now, decades after her death, threatens to totally eclipse her actuality and erase any genuine human complexity that doesn’t align with her best-selling tragic paradigm. In Blonde Marilyn Monroe is no longer a real person but a more of a void that members of the public can fill with their own vague desires. In her essay “Thirty Are Better Than One: Marilyn Monroe and the Performance of Americanness,” academic Susanne Hamscha writes that Monroe has become “a surface on which narratives of American culture can be (re-) constructed” and “functions as a cultural type that can be reproduced, transformed, translated into new contexts, and enacted by other people.” 

As Ana de Armas says in the trailer’s voice-over, “Marilyn doesn’t exist. When I come out of my dressing room, I’m Norma Jeane. I’m still her when the camera is rolling. Marilyn Monroe only exists on the screen.” We've abstracted this woman so far from herself, even during her own life, that she was always essentially a figment of our imagination. What we conceive of as Marilyn is actually just the output of our collective projection of her. And, as a heavily fictionalized version of her life, Blonde makes no attempt at correcting the legends surrounding this woman or grounding her in reality, instead adding yet another layer of illusion to her already mythologized existence, and a particularly scandalous one at that. Source: vanityfair.com

“One of the bright spots in Ladies of Chorus (1948) is Miss Monroe’s singing,” wrote critic Tibor Krekes. “She is pretty and, with her pleasing voice and style, she shows promise”—hardly a rave, but nevertheless a gratifying first review that altered Marilyn's career. Marilyn’s singing is more than pleasing, and she displays a remarkable control of pitch and range. Perhaps more remarkable is her on-screen lambency. Even in this early role, when Marilyn appears in-frame, everything around her fades into the background. Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, was not impressed and her contract was not renewed. Her dismissal from Columbia did not have the same impact on her as her earlier dismissal from Fox. After a brief hiatus, Marilyn’s next appearance on film would be in a Mary Pickford production, featuring her in a scene with Groucho Marx in Love Happy (1949).

Natasha Lytess was the staff drama and acting coach at Columbia when Marilyn signed her six month contract. Natasha left Columbia and became Marilyn’s formal drama coach, a function she performed through the filming of The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn’s directors, co-stars and many other Hollywood notables blamed Natasha over the years for what was occasionally termed Marilyn’s stiff mannered speech. Harry Cohn was probably the most despised man in Hollywood. Later, after Marilyn’s rise to international fame, Cohn admitted his mistake of not having renewed her contract at Columbia. 

Marilyn was just one of several female stars that Cohn pursued, along with Rita Hayworth, Mary Castle, Kim Novak and Evelyn Keyes. Lucille Carroll, whose stage name was Jane Starr, she worked as a Broadway actress and she would become the first female studio executive in Hollywood. According to Lucille Carroll, “Under Marilyn’s baby-doll, kitten exterior, she was tough and shrewd and calculating,” was Lucille’s assessment. One day during her last summer in 1962, Marilyn told her confidante Susan Strasberg: ‘Hollywood will never forgive me—not for leaving, not for fighting the system—but for winning, which I’m going to do.’ Maybe Hollywood has not forgiven her after all this time. —Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (2014) by Donald Spoto