Paul Newman: one of the best actors of all time

For Empire’s February 2023 issue, we asked readers to vote for the best actors of all time – the silver-screen stars that always deliver, that have changed the game, and whose distinctive talents cannot be replicated. And the winners, in no particular order, are…

Marilyn Monroe

Notable roles: Rose Loomis (Niagara), Lorelei Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Pola Debevoise (How to Marry a Millionaire), The Girl (The Seven Year Itch), Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk (Some Like It Hot), Roslyn Tabor (The Misfits)

Oscars won: 0

Iconic line: "I wanna be loved by you, alone… Boop-boop-a-doop!" (Some Like It Hot)

A true movie star, in every sense, Marilyn Monroe's earth-shattering fame sometimes threatened to overshadow everything else – but beneath the ‘blonde bombshell’ sex symbol was the heart of a true artist, who was comfortable with her sexuality and femininity and used it to brilliant ends, in comedies and dramas.

Bette Davis

Notable roles: Margo Channing (All About Eve), Julie Marsden (Jezebel), Leslie Crosby (The Letter), Charlotte Vale (Now, Voyager), Baby Jane Hudson (What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?), Mildred Rogers (Of Human Bondage)

Oscars won: 2 (Jezebel, Dangerous)

Iconic line: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” (All About Eve)

Seldom has an actor emanated so much force on-screen: Bette Davis was a cinematic cyclone, sweeping through scenes, leaving co-stars dazed and debris in her wake. She took on one complex role after another, not caring if the characters were unlikeable, and aced them all. Her work still bites today.

Humphrey Bogart

Notable roles: Rick Blaine (Casablanca), Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep), Frank McCloud (Key Largo), Charlie Allnutt (The African Queen), Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Duke Mantee (The Petrified Forest), Harry Dawes (The Barefoot Contessa), Roy Earle (High Sierra), Harry 'Steve' Morgan (To Have And Have Not)

Oscars won: 1 (The African Queen)

Iconic line: “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid” (Casablanca)

The thing about Bogart is that his “iconic line” is basically every line he ever said. His laconic, tough-guy energy gave every line a spin of cool defiance that screenwriters rose to match. He wasn’t the tallest, strongest, or most handsome, and at times he barely seemed to move – but you could never take your eyes off him.

Marlon Brando

Notable roles: Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Terry Malloy (On The Waterfront), Vito Corleone (The Godfather), Colonel Kurtz (Apocalypse Now), Jor-El (Superman: The Movie)

Oscars won: 2 (On The Waterfront, The Godfather)

Iconic line: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” (The Godfather)

Among the most influential screen actors of all-time, Brando hit Hollywood like a hammer in the early 1950s – fundamentally changing the definition of “good” acting, despite Truman Capote calling him "dumb as hell." Brando’s deeply-felt naturalism was magnetic, and all his famous difficulty was worth it for his undeniable power. 

Paul Newman

Notable roles: “Fast” Eddie Felson (The Hustler, The Color Of Money), Reggie Dunlop (Slap Shot), Frank Galvin (The Verdict), Hud Bannon (Hud), Henry Gondorff (The Sting), Luke Jackson (Cool Hand Luke), Butch Cassidy (Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid), John Rooney (Road To Perdition)

Oscars won: 1 (The Color Of Money)

Iconic line: “You don’t know what winning is, Bert. You’re a loser. ‘Cause you’re dead inside! Too high, Bert - the price is too high.”  (The Hustler)

Cool, laconic, capable of eating way more hard-boiled eggs than you – he was a bona fide movie star, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. Oscar Levant wrote that Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood, and that Newman had said, "Too close to the cake. Also, no place to study." The Hustler was the portrait of a sad man who's afraid to be a winner, that type perhaps was a first in the cannons of American cinema. Source: www.empireonline.com

While Hud does not shoot Homer in the film Hud, Lonnie nonetheless assigns him responsibility for his granddad’s demise. Old Homer moans and dies while lying across Hud’s lap. Lon pulls his dead granddad’s head out of Hud’s lap into his, accusing Hud of “fixing it so that he didn’t want to live anymore.” James Wong Howe gives us a high angle of Hud standing and moving to his right toward the Cadillac’s headlamps.  We cut to an instant of blackness before Hud enters the frame screen right, camera looking up. Hud stops in the center of this extraordinary shot, starkly but flatteringly lit against black, looking down at Lon and us: “You don’t know the whole story.” And then adds: “I guess you could say I helped him about as much as he helped me.” By now Martin Ritt may have assumed the audience would feel that no backstory could excuse Hud. But we must draw a vital distinction between explanation and justification in order to consider more thoroughly why Ritt’s desired effect was “lost in translation” from novel to film. First, the Hollywood-conditioned audience was likely pulling for Hud to be a misunderstood hero who will be redeemed by a good woman. Except for the attempted rape scene, for example, Newman is always photographed in classic three-point lighting, which enhances the star’s attractiveness. 

After the rape attempt, Hud spots Alma waiting at the bus station; “I’m sorry,” he says, cocking his hat. She reasserts her own libido and female power by stating an irony: she might have seduced him eventually “without the roughhouse.” Her silent stare at Hud when he responds, “Why didn’t you speak up sooner?,” fairly clenches Patricia Neal’s Academy Award for Best Actress. “I’ll remember you, Honey,” he says as she boards the bus, camera looking down on him from within. “You’re the one that got away.” Hud, the outsider, drifts to screen right and out of frame as bus and camera take Alma mercifully away from this “cold-blooded bastard.” But the original audience might still have wondered whether some part of Hud, a remorseful, tragic hero, really means, “You’re the one I could have loved had I not injured you so”? 

In any case, the film turns the novel’s antagonist into an ironic protagonist. This strongly suggests that Hud’s having accidentally killed his older brother Norman (Lon’s father) in a drunken car crash at age seventeen accounts for his need to protect himself from the guilt and loss. Homer “took that hard,” but reviled Hud long before the accident, we are surprised to learn. There are several instances of Hud’s aberrant behavior that might, with a different mode of narration, elicit compassion: Homer raised him harshly, kept him “driving that feedwagon” instead of letting him go to college (Horseman). In the novel Homer had sent him to the Pacific in World War II where he was left traumatized. Paul Newman’s biographer Daniel O’Brien writes, the actor “felt the audience had only seen the ‘cool’ superficial Hud Bannon, failing to pick up on the dark, amoral character underneath.” Newman said in 1967: "I got a lot of letters after that picture from kids saying Hud was right. The old man’s a jerk and the kid’s a schmuck. That son of a bitch that I hated they loved. So the audience makes a film their own – it depends what’s going on at the time in the country." 

Ritt, Ravetch, Frank Jr., and Newman transformed Hud somewhat out of the novel’s sociopath into what I call a wounded narcissist with antisocial traits, a role that proved the perfect vehicle for Paul Newman’s “sensitive rebel” persona, even if here Ritt thought to cast Newman against type as a raw villain. For in their urgency to portray Hud as no mere two-dimensional reprobate like his prototype in the novel, the filmmakers re-created the novel’s antagonist into the movie’s protagonist, yet evidently expecting the audience to condemn him nonetheless. As we know, in rebellious youth culture, the meaning of “cool” is that temporary ironic reversal of the very virtues and values the elders are trying to imprint onto the next generation, as if to question why the better part of wisdom is about never getting to have any fun. By the early 1960s, to be “cool,” perhaps, seemed integral to that separation and individuation process. It is important to understand that Hud’s original audience, did not need to endorse all of these behaviors in any literal sense in order for Hud’s acts to symbolize, even self-caricature, its own rebellious impulses. 

What was dominant in the post-World War II West was that version of capitalism known as Keynesianism, a holdover from the New Deal. It was based on economist John Maynard Keynes’s notion that capitalism, while the best of all possible economies, nevertheless needed government intervention, progressive taxation, and regulation to balance private profit with public well-being: that is, to minimize negative and optimize positive externalities. “An external cost occurs,” writes economist Steven L. Slavin, “when the production or consumption of some good or service inflicts costs on a third party without compensation. An external benefit occurs when some of the benefits derived from the production of some good or service are enjoyed by a third party”. As Granddad Homer tells Lon early in the film, “I expect you’ll get your share of what’s good,” implying the capitalist ideal of pursuing personal gain without costing others: 

“A boy like you deserves it.” Indeed, after a night of carousing with, and defending, Hud, Granddad tells Lon, “You’re going to have to make up your own mind someday what’s right and what’s wrong.” Homer in fact speaks for the filmmakers when he warns the teen, “Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.” A large contingent of the New Left youth, likewise, would succumb to what Adam Curtis analyzes in the BBC documentary series The Century of the Self (2002). While some activists remained altruistically motivated, and counterculture hippies were communal, according to Curtis, many left-wing participants despaired of any outward revolution in favor of social change brought about through each individual’s inward liberation from outmoded social constraints. Technological advances in mass production allowed for a certain “customized” consumerism touting everyone’s unique individuality. Christopher Lasch likewise studied the mass psychology of the 1960s and 1970s as having grown dialectically out of older forms of neuroses like hysteria and obsessional neuroses, associated with older phases of capitalism, to the growing psychiatric concern with narcissism. 

In 2003, screenwriters Ravetch and Frank Jr. reflected back that something of this spirit was emerging during the making of Hud: “We felt the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, indulgence, and greed – which, of course, fully blossomed in the ’eighties and ’nineties’” (Baer 260). And narcissism itself indicates some psychological wounding at its heart contracted, as Marcuse argued in Eros and Civilization (1955), in a political economy experienced as “surplus repression.” The narcissist,” writes Christopher Lasch, “has no interest in the future because, in part, he has so little interest in the past”. It is as though the logical extension of Martin Ritt’s Old Left contempt for Haight-Ashbury was the Weather Underground, about which Lasch writes: “The atmosphere in which the weathermen lived – an atmosphere of violence, danger, drugs, sexual promiscuity, moral and psychic chaos – derived not so much from an older revolutionary tradition as from the turmoil and narcissistic anguish of contemporary America”.

As we have seen, Hud freely obeys his impulses, confident of simply improvising his way out of consequences. Homer argues not merely from neighborliness but from wider social responsibility: “And risk startin’ a’ epidemic in the entire country?”, which would be a severely negative economic externality. Hud argues from what he cynically regards as business norms: “Why, this whole country is run on epidemics, where you been?” In this sense, Hud, released on the eve of the JFK assassination, is not just a modern western but very much a film of the long 1950s at the “hard gate” of 1960s unrest, soon to be cynically embroiled in disappointed idealism-turned-mass-narcissistic indulgence. Interestingly, Larry McMurtry felt that sacrificing the herd, Homer’s life work, was the moral imperative. But though he admired the film, the author of Horseman assigned fault to the screenwriters for “following my novel too closely.” As Lasch maintains, “Many radicals still direct their indignation against the authoritarian family, repressive sexual morality, literary censorship, the work ethic, and other foundations of bourgeois order that have been weakened or destroyed by advanced capitalism itself” (xvi). Hud’s “rebellion” was therefore understandable in the abstract, even if such was the pseudo-rebellion of the new culture of narcissism across the political spectrum. —“You Don’t Know the Story”: Horseman, Pass By and the Misprision of Hud (2021) by Randall Spinks. Source: https://brightlightsfilm.com

Paul Newman: "In those days theatrical agents took the train up from Grand Central Station to New Haven to scout the new talent at the drama school. There was apparently at least one in attendance for one of Yale’s four performances of Beethoven, a fellow from the Liebling-Wood Agency, Jim Merrick. He came backstage afterwards, gave me his card, and suggested I come see him in Manhattan. The Liebling-Wood Agency was a powerhouse on Broadway. It represented many of the era’s leading playwrights—such as Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Yip Harburg—as well as some of the hottest stage talents, including Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. So I began making day trips to the city just to test the waters, on those days when I didn’t have classes. I read a theatrical trade paper called Actor’s Cues to find out about open casting calls, and went to many of them at CBS and NBC. They were airing a lot of live television dramas then being shot and broadcast from New York, but I never got any jobs from these open calls. Jim Merrick wanted to sign me to the Liebling-Wood Agency, but his bosses didn’t want to make a commitment to me. In the meantime, unbeknownst to Liebling-Wood, I’d also been seen by another talent agent, Maynard Morris, from the big MCA operation—but again with no commitment or obligation. One afternoon, Maynard sent me out to see a theater producer that the Liebling-Wood Agency had already had me visit. That’s when I decided to leave Liebling-Wood. That summer, I told Jackie I wanted to give New York a real try. For the time being, she would remain in New Haven with Scott, while I moved into a tiny apartment on the corner of Spring Street and Sixth Avenue, what’s now considered SoHo. It was incredibly tiny and I stayed there with two other people—a Yale young woman named Joan Szell and her boyfriend, who were summer housesitting for the actual tenants. Jackie had an aunt who lived on Staten Island and we moved there. Plus, someone we met suggested I might be able to get a job as a model. I was broke. I owned only one suit. And when I got offered a cover shoot for a detective magazine, I took it. I was posed with a cute girl in a brassiere, and I was supposed to be grabbing her arm. I was really embarrassed—but they paid me $150, which was quite a bit of money then. I walked out of that studio thinking, “Boy, I can go out now and buy me a new suit for $39.95!” 

"I became a member of the Actors Studio, the extraordinary acting study group headed by Lee Strasberg and famous for preaching the Method—the art of using your own memories and feelings to inhabit a role. How, I still wonder, did I ever pass that audition? They didn’t, and couldn’t, have responded to my acting. I’m sure the other actors there wondered, “How did this son of a bitch get in here?” But when I mixed my confidence and energy with my real emotions—terror and fright (which came out as rage)—something genuine was going on, even if just by accident. I felt the Actors Studio members were the real actors, the bohemians, and they saw this kid from Shaker Heights wearing his seersucker suit and, well, I was in their world but definitely I was not a part of it." —"Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man" (2022) by Paul Newman

Frank & Marilyn: The Lives, the Loves

Marilyn received dispiriting career news: early in 1957, when Oscar nominations for 1956 were announced, she wasn’t on the list. Even worse: fellow Actors Studio actress Carroll Baker was nominated for Baby Doll, a role Marilyn had wanted. Perhaps the coup de grace: Don Murray, the newcomer launched to stardom thanks to being Marilyn’s leading man, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Poor Marilyn! “I never understood why she wasn’t nominated,” reflected Murray in later years. Both the movie and director Logan were also ignored by the Academy. “Marilyn had defied the system,” noted David Brown, “and you needed the studio behind you all the way to get nominations.” Don Murray felt that not only should Marilyn have been nominated, she should have won. “I thought Marilyn’s performance was so much richer, had so much more variety, and it was so much more interesting than Ingrid Bergman’s character in Anastasia,” he said. 

Unknown to many, Marilyn Monroe became a temporary but rather unstable member of the Rat Pack. Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, an enemy of Sinatra, wrote that he dated some of the great beauties and stars of their day, including Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe. “Others,” she claimed, “were fluffy struggling dolls of show business.” Although Joe DiMaggio socialized with Sinatra, he never completely trusted him, especially around Marilyn, causing a rift in the trio. Marilyn wanted to film What a Way to Go with Sinatra, but one night she decided that she preferred Gene Kelly as her co-star. At 20th Century Fox, executives wanted to co-star Marilyn and Sinatra in Pink Tights, a remake of Betty Grable’s 1943 Coney Island. Marilyn was open to the idea of co-starring with Frank in a film in which her character evolves from a prim schoolteacher to a torch-singing cabaret artiste. Frank’s moods—testy, difficult, unpredictable, rebellious, stubborn—were part of the package, as were Marilyn’s. Lauren Bacall, with her born-in-the-Bronx traditional Jewish upbringing, had been accustomed to far less volatile behavior when it came to relationships. Bogie had been “a pussycat.” Bacall had been romanced by Sinatra, but they broke up their announced engagement.

Since marrying Marilyn, Arthur had bought a second farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, an upgrade from his previous home, where he and his ex-wife had lived since 1947, after the success of his play All My Sons. Pleased that Arthur’s property lent itself to improvement, she had an idea. Since she’d once met fabled architect Frank Lloyd Wright, she contacted him with a request—would he be interested in designing her “dream home”? He traveled to the site and came up with a rendering of a home that perhaps a Joseph Schenck or a Darryl Zanuck could afford. She loved it. But it was hardly Arthur Miller’s idea of a “dream home.” And the cost! The pool alone would have been $250,000 ($2.2 million in today’s dollars).  Marilyn faced reality: since Wright’s dream house was out of the question, she suggested to Arthur that they make some improvements: raise the roof of the house, add a guest bedroom, get a TV set, and she would do some inexpensive redecorating that would require very little reconstruction. Miller was agreeable. He was handy, describing himself as “a born carpenter and mechanic.” He’d been building things since he was seven.

When Glenn Ford announced Marilyn as the winner of the Golden Globe, there was prolonged applause as she made her way to the podium. When Ford handed her the statuette, she smiled broadly, turned to the audience, and clutched the award to her bosom. In a breathy voice, she said, “Thank you with all my heart.” According to Peter Lawford’s manager, Milton Ebbins, whose comments echoed those of Sinatra’s crony Jilly Rizzo, Frank was in love with Marilyn. Frank thought Marilyn was a great beauty in the same league than Ava Gardner. Marilyn confided in those closest to her that Frank was a skillful, unselfish lover. When they asked how Frank and DiMaggio compared, she purportedly replied: “He’s no Joe.” Frank dared to employ a highly dangerous tactic: he began having sex with Pat Lawford—Peter’s wife, RFK’s sister—hoping he could get her to use her influence with her brothers to let up on the mob. What he got was the undying enmity of Robert Kennedy, who learned about it when J. Edgar Hoover played him audiotapes of a Sinatra's phone conversation with Sam Giancana, during which the information was disclosed. Bobby demanded that his brother sever all ties with Frank. 

Frank needed some breathing room, and he began a highly publicized “romance” with twenty-five-year-old dancer/actress Juliet Prowse. They even became “engaged.” She later stated emphatically that the whole affair had been strictly for publicity, for both of them, never anything more. Prowse would later date her co-star Elvis Presley while filming GI Blues, with everyone waiting to see what Elvis would do next in his career after military service. Elvis's one and only meeting with Marilyn Monroe also took place backstage at the Paramount lot in June 1960. In GI Blues, Elvis  played Army Specialist Tulsa McLean opposite her nightclub dancer Lili (Juliet Prowse), and their onscreen romance was mirrored behind the scenes. Prowse later said: "Elvis and I had an affair... We had a sexual attraction like two healthy young people, but he was already a victim of his fans. We always met in his room and never went out." Frank's affair with Juliet Prowse apparently did not fool Marilyn for long, because she and Frank got back together. 

It was around this time that Sinatra consulted his loyal attorney for an opinion on what he was now contemplating: marrying Monroe. Meanwhile, when the lawyer realized that Sinatra wasn’t joking about marrying Marilyn—he wasn’t acting on a whim or an impulse; he was dead serious—he pointed out to his client how marrying her could be problematic. However, Frank’s mind was made up. If Marilyn was his wife, he said, chances were that everyone would back off, give her some space, and allow her to get herself together. They wouldn’t dare do otherwise. Frank told his lawyer Lew Wasserman that he wanted the marriage to take place in Europe (probably Paris); that way he wouldn’t have to deal with DiMaggio. He told Wasserman to make inquiries about where the best place would be to get married quietly and assured the attorney that he was going to give the whole matter a lot of thought. He likened this decision to a film project in development and said that he was going to talk to Marilyn about it. “And then we’ll see what happens…” No one knows whether that discussion between Marilyn and Frank—did she really want to marry him?—ever took place. According to Jilly Rizzo, Frank did propose before the year 1961 was out, and he was surprised when she said no to him.

Frank was completely supportive of Marilyn’s imminent return to the screen, although he, and the rest of the industry, knew Fox was drowning. Peter Levathes, the executive recently appointed head of production, was “a dark and brooding man,” recalled David Brown. Eventually, Marilyn had won not only the battle with Fox but the respect of the industry. Norma Jean had proven her point: Marilyn Monroe was not a “disposable” star. It’s unlikely that so many questions would have been raised surrounding her untimely death if her efforts at resuscitating her career had failed. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Bobby Kennedy, “with his curiosity, his sympathy, his absolute directness of response to distress, in some way got through the glittering mist as few did.” Bobby certainly seemed to have a crush on Marilyn. She denied rumors of the affair, although she knew it was the talk of Hollywood. According to columnist Victor Lasky, "The White House was shaken by Marilyn’s death. The truth was that there had indeed been a cover-up, one designed to protect the Kennedys by hiding their relationship with the actress."

During the course of that ill-fated July weekend at Cal Neva, several disturbing incidents took place. In her bungalow, number 52, in front of Frank and the Lawfords, Marilyn removed several syringes from her purse, placed them on a table, and, with the cool precision of a surgeon, calmly filled them with the contents of a few “vitamin” capsules she had broken open. They all gasped as she proceeded to inject herself in the arm. Sinatra couldn’t believe what he just saw. “Don’t worry,” she said airily, “I know what I’m doing. It gets into your system faster that way.” Frank immediately phoned Dr. Greenson: Marilyn was a mess! What the hell was Greenson doing? She ought to be in a sanatorium! Frank had done everything he could to make her stay at Cal Neva comfortable, including issuing special orders for healthful meals to be sent to her bungalow. That was Mama Dolly’s cure-all: eat, you’ll feel better! The food, though, was hardly touched. Things seemed to spin out of control and Marilyn overdosed on barbiturates. The Lawfords were panic-stricken, but Frank knew what to do—along with Peter and Pat, he walked her around the room, keeping her awake with coffee. “She wants to kill herself,” said Frank, “I’ve been there…”

Late in 1963, Angie Dickinson—whose friendship with Sinatra would stand the test of time—arrived in New York to promote her MCA/Universal film Captain Newman, M.D. Interestingly, the picture was based on Dr. Ralph Greenson’s World War II experiences with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ms. Dickinson said how proud she was of the picture, saying that it was one she would like the president to see (there was no question that she wasn’t talking about the president of Universal). Ms. Dickinson’s relationship with JFK was very much a topic of conversation within the inner sanctums of MCA/Universal. Ms. Dickinson spoke openly. She’d liked Marilyn, and had seen her not long before she died. “She looked gorgeous,” she said, “but when I spoke with her, she didn’t recognize me. There was no expression in her eyes. Her eyes had a blankness.” 

From the personal files of Marilyn Monroe: one of her diary entries dated June 7, 1962, reports a fall in the shower between 2 and 3 a.m. resulting in swelling and tenderness of the nose. Monroe was brought to Dr. Gurdin by her psychoanalyst, Dr. Ralph Greenson. Monroe was referred to Drs. Conti and Steinberg for X-rays. For her visit to the radiologists she used the alias ‘Miss Joan Newman,’ and that name appears on the paperwork with Monroe’s Brentwood home address. The pseudonym was probably inspired by the golden couple Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward. In the memory-filled, hazy, wee small hours of the morning, how often must Frank have thought about the girl he’d failed to save. Garson Kanin (alongside his wife actress Ruth Gordon) years later recalled, “I know that Frank was very sensitive about anyone bringing up Marilyn Monroe’s name. A friend of mine once made that mistake—it was at a dinner party, and Frank and his wife Barbara were among the guests—and my inquisitive friend told me that the look he got from Frank was scary, ‘I thought he was going to hit me,’ he said. But for Frank, I think that awful Cal Neva weekend was like a wound that never healed.” —Frank & Marilyn: The Lives, the Loves, and the Fascinating Relationship of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe (2022) by Edward Z. Epstein

An Evening With Marilyn, Myth of Support

An Evening With Marilyn is a new novel in German, from actress turned author Maxine Wildner, reimagining the night of Marilyn’s last birthday. Maxine’s prior subjects include Hilde Knef, the German actress who began her Hollywood career alongside Marilyn in 1946. The cover art features a 1953 photo by Gene Kornman. “Marilyn Monroe, the sex symbol of a generation, the abandoned child, the underrated actress who drove her directors mad – two months before her death, Marilyn celebrates her 36th birthday in a New York restaurant. Everyone is there: Billy Wilder, the comedy legend who helped Marilyn achieve her greatest successes; Laurence Olivier, who was voted the greatest actor of the 20th century and with whom she had the worst professional experiences; Paula Strasberg, Marilyn’s method acting teacher; Baseball-icon Joe DiMaggio; her schizophrenic mother and even guest of honour JFK might attend. Only Marilyn is late, as usual. As drinks are served, this illustrious group makes the tragic and inexplicable life of Norma Jeane Baker a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe come to life before our eyes. It takes us from the orphanage to a forced marriage and up to the stars in the Hollywood sky. The last birthday of her life turns into an unforgettable night.” 

Marilyn is also the subject of another recent novel by German authors Nadja and Claudia Beinert, part of ‘Inspiring Women,’ a 23-volume series by various authors, with other subjects including Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn and Maria Callas. Focusing on the origins of her remarkable career, Marilyn and the Hollywood Stars is also available in Spanish and Italian. (The Italian cover features another Gene Kornman photo of Marilyn in her gold lamé dress.) “Los Angeles, 1942: Norma’s childhood is lonely, her refuge in the cinema, where Hollywood actresses are so much more self-confident than she is. In front of the camera, Norma sparkles with vitality, all self-doubt is forgotten. And suddenly she knows: she wants to be in the limelight, that’s the only thing that makes her happy. But first she has to emancipate herself from the prudish rules of her time in order to become who she is today: Marilyn Monroe, the greatest icon in film history.” Source: themarilynreport.com

Tennessee Williams about Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio: “Marilyn was an example of the weak children who seek a guru. Having no proper balance in her life, having no available family, having no understanding of the give-and-take that is daily life, she was drawn toward Mary Baker Eddy, Buddha, Jung, Freud, and finally, the gnomish Lee Strasberg, who specialized in adopting sexually confused women and becoming the seemingly gentle father figure they desired. Strasberg lied to her and told her she was the new Duse; he told her she should play Nina; he told her to investigate O’Neill and Shakespeare. This was all folly, because Marilyn had no understanding of her talent, and it was folly because Strasberg only wanted access to privileges from her fame. Strasberg got what he wanted. At one point the Times headlines read “The bitter battle is over—Marilyn Monroe, a five-foot-five-and-a-half-inch blonde weighing 118 alluringly distributed pounds, has brought Twentieth Century Fox to its knees. It was during Marilyn’s tenure at the Studio, and particularly after her death, that the exodus of the talented began from the Studio." 

Marilyn was also remote, cloying and demanding. She knew her power and she abused it, but in the demonstration of it, the spiral of destruction deepened and intensified. Do not think for a moment that I do not see this in my own behavior and that of others: I am only offering a sobering lesson. When we can’t imagine understanding or loving a God or some other myth of support, we attach ourselves to artistic symbols: the lost soul; the waif; the abused artist. I spoke to Arthur Miller only once about Marilyn, and it was during his exhumation of her [After the Fall, 1964]. I wondered if he was satisfied; I wondered if he had exorcised himself of her spirit, and I wondered if he had expiated his own sins. He told me he thought he could help her, yes, but he also wanted to buck the odds and be the homely, cerebral Jew who got the beauty queen; he wanted to be the bookish, pedantic, shy boy who introduced the beautiful girl to books and plays and ideas. Arthur wanted to be her savior, but he also wanted to be envied; he wanted attention; he wanted to be noticed. It’s fine to cry for Marilyn Monroe. I did, and I still do.” —Follies of God : Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog (2015) by James Grissom

The Misfits: The Film That Ended a Marriage

The Misfits (1961) will be screened in the Ted Mann Theatre at the Academy Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles this Saturday, December 3 at 7 pm, in a North American premiere for the 4K restoration completed from the original 35 mm negative in 2018. The film’s initial release was eclipsed by the death of leading man Clark Gable, and would also prove to be Marilyn’s cinematic swansong – but it’s now considered a minor classic, bridging the gap between Hollywood’s golden age and the 1960s New Wave. The Misfits is followed at 9 pm by another hidden gem of film preservation, Call It Murder (1934). Source: themarilynreport.com

Even though the Monroe/Miller marriage was in crisis, Marilyn was surrounded by people she liked and got on with – Gable, Clift, Wallach and Ritter, a special friend of hers from the Actors Studio. She also had her masseur Ralph Roberts, her press secretary May Reis, her makeup man Allan “Whitey” Snyder, her stand-in Evelyn Moriarty, her limo driver Rudy Kausky, her publicist Rupert Allan and the two people who did her hair, Sidney Guilaroff and Agnes Flanagan. Reis had worked for Miller in the past. Huston gave Roberts a small part as an ambulance driver in the film. The only person John Huston was concerned about was Paula Strasberg, who replaced Natasha Lytess as Monroe’s acting coach and who threatened to derail any production with her imperiousness. Slowly but surely, Miller’s script had begun to infiltrate her life. Where did one end and the other begin? Nobody knew for sure. He was getting ideas from her daily behavior. Mood changes that depressed both of them enriched his work. Monroe’s demons became Roslyn’s by proxy. Miller didn’t know why she was offended. He thought he was portraying some of her most endearing qualities – “spontaneous joy and sympathy.” 

Lee Strasberg had seen something in Marilyn that most other acting coaches missed. “What was going on inside was not what was going on outside,” he said. “That always means there may be something there to work with.” Of all the stars he'd worked with, he said, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando were the two who stood out for him. One of the reasons Strasberg took such an interest in Monroe was to rebuild his reputation. It suffered some damage from Brando’s renunciation of him in favor of Stella Adler. Marilyn performed many interesting pieces at the Actors Studio, from Golden Boy to A Streetcar Named Desire to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. No doubt this was the biggest stretch for her. 

The Hollywood Studio Club, a building near the Paramount Studios that housed hundreds of young hopefuls, had opened in 1926 and it would close definitely its doors in 1975. Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Malone, Kim Novak, Donna Reed, Barbara Hale, Barbara Rush and Sharon Tate had lived in the Hollywood Club for a while (the tops was 3 years). “I heard there was this place for girls in show business who hadn’t made it yet and you got two meals a day for $15 a week,” said Rita Moreno, so she and her friend Louise Martinson moved in. After “playing a lot of Indian maidens,” Moreno signed a contract with Fox. Sparks flashed when Moreno met Brando on the Fox lot. Soon, she was taking his calls on the hallway phone, grabbing her nail polish on the way because, she says, “he was on the phone for hours at a time.” Curled up on the floor with the receiver on her shoulder and the cord stretched as far as it would go, she gave herself a mani-pedi. “All the girls wanted to know what happened on my dates with him, so Louise said, 'Let’s write down your whole experience and read it out loud'.”

One night their bedroom was packed as Rita Moreno recounted accompanying Brando to an Actors Studio party in San Fernando Valley—where she met Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (whose romance was blossoming) and also James Dean. While Dean seemed fixated on Marilyn, and since Brando was busy dancing with Moreno, Marilyn seemed intrigued by Newman, although it was evident that Marilyn was not Newman's type. Actually, Newman was not enthused with the occasional antics of Woodward as glamour queen, that he called "Joanne's fantasy of being like Marilyn Monroe." 

John Huston hated the way Monroe treated Miller while shooting The Misfits. She insulted him in front of others. He’d act like he didn’t care: “He would pretend he wasn’t listening.” Her hangers-on carried on the humiliation: “I think they hoped to demonstrate their loyalty to Marilyn by being impertinent to Arthur. On these occasions Arthur never changed his expression.” In his book Conversations with Marilyn (1976), journalist WJ Weatherby gives voice to Marilyn's intimate thoughts about her failed marriage with Miller: "I had asked why she had yelled at the film crew of The Misfits, in particular a shy, well meaning man who had taken it badly. 'I can be a monster,' she replied seriously. 'Some of my friends want me to be innocent. If they saw the monster in me, they'd probably never talk to me. Sometimes I think that's what happened in my marriage to Arthur. He saw me as so beautiful and innocent between the wolves of Hollywood, I tried to be that person. When the monster showed up, Arthur couldn't believe it. But I felt he knew and loved all of me. I put Arthur through a lot, I know. It would've been easier with a more party-going kind of man. But I want someone different from me. A challenge." 

Monroe always looked out for Clift. When his jeans sagged, she told the makeup people to moisten them so they became tight. Though the overt romantic relationship in the film is between Gable and Monroe, the one between Clift and Monroe is in some ways deeper. Clift patted Monroe’s bottom on the set one day and she was amused. At other times she tantalized him with her body, rubbing her breasts across his nose. It was said that she was “determined to get him into bed for the hell of it,” thinking of his affair with Liz Taylor. Clift tried to make love to her once but they were both too drunk at the time for anything to happen. Instead they just “fooled around.” —The Misfits: The Film That Ended a Marriage (2022) by Aubrey Malone

America’s Favorite Marilyn Monroe Cliché

In her article America’s Favorite Marilyn Monroe Cliché for The Atlantic, Sarah Churchwell (author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe) deconstructs the pernicious trope that Marilyn was a false identity imposed by the studios upon the ‘real’ Norma Jeane – as propagated by biographers and in popular culture, and most recently in the wildly misleading Netflix ‘biopic’, Blonde. Most films that are widely reviled upon release simply evaporate into their own disfavour. Yet Andrew Dominik’s recent Netflix film, Blonde, has lingered in the public consciousness after its release and subsequent criticism for a simple reason: the enduring star power of Marilyn Monroe. ‘I have to tell you immediately that I never would have written any book about Marilyn Monroe,’ Joyce Carol Oates said in an interview promoting the novel at the time. ‘I got very interested in writing about an American girl who is Norma Jeane Baker who becomes a celebrity later in life. To me, she’s always Norma Jeane.’ It was hardly a new idea then, and it isn’t one now. Since the first studio-written press release in 1946, the search for the real Norma Jeane behind the supposedly artificial persona of Marilyn Monroe has driven endless stories… We talk endlessly about the myth of Marilyn Monroe, but the myth of Norma Jeane is its foundation, encouraging people to express contempt for the ‘fake’ Monroe by pretending to love the ‘real’ Norma Jeane instead. 

In fact, Marilyn Monroe was a real person in every way recognised by our culture—except in our stories about her. The idea that Norma Jeane is both the real Monroe and a different person from Monroe is part of the myth of Marilyn Monroe. Regardless of how unconscious it may be, reducing the staggeringly successful Monroe to ‘little Norma Jeane’ has the undeniable effect of denying her power, keeping her infantilised and pathologised. That fundamental idea of Marilyn Monroe (as artifice) bleeds into any number of unquestioned clichés about her. One, for example, is that Norma Jeane hated Marilyn—as proved, supposedly, by the tragic circumstances of her death. Little that Marilyn Monroe actually said suggests this is true. In many interviews, especially in the fullness of her stardom, she spoke of self-respect, insisting upon her self-worth, asking people to take her seriously. Monroe’s drug addiction could be self-destructive, but it also likely spun beyond her control before she comprehended its dangers. Addiction doesn’t have to be a symptom of self-hatred: It might also provide escape from the  incomprehension of others.

Marilyn Monroe’s life did not happen to Norma Jeane. Norma Jeane is significant because she created Marilyn Monroe. If Norma Jeane had not turned herself into Marilyn, we would never have heard of her. But we don’t speak of Norma Jeane as being the agent of her own transformation; instead, we speak of Norma Jeane passively becoming Marilyn. We still refuse to do Marilyn Monroe the basic justice of crediting her for her own stardom. Marilyn was not put on a treadmill; she pushed and shoved her way onto it, and then beat the competition. Nor did anyone make her change her name: A casting director suggested it, and Monroe, hoping for stardom, agreed. ‘Monroe’ was, in fact, her mother’s maiden name. She legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe soon after she started her own production company: There is no reason to view her name change as anything other than a triumphant assertion of her identity. British journalist William J Weatherby (author of Conversations with Marilyn) said: "Marilyn had an ability, unique in my experience, to make her real persona remain elusive. If you just considered her a blonde bombshell, she'd play that for you, but she wouldn't have respect for you."

We also prefer Marilyn Monroe, but we flatly refuse to admit it. There is another Marilyn Monroe, recalled by those who actually knew her—a woman of tremendous determination, ambition, humor, and dedication to her craft. Her addiction to pills was serious; her stage fright was real and disabling; every one of her successes was met with gaslighting. But she rose above it all, fighting back, fighting them off, showing them up, until the day she took too many of the pills she routinely took too recklessly. ‘Everybody knows about her insecurities,’ another Monroe biography quoted her friend, the photographer Sam Shaw, as saying, ‘but not everybody knows what fun she was, that she never complained about silly things, that she never had a bad word to say about anyone, and that she had a wonderful, spontaneous sense of humour.’ The truly rare tribute to Marilyn Monroe would focus on her survivalism, her ambition and wit, the courage with which she fought her detractors. The great struggle of Marilyn’s life wasn’t her struggle against addiction, depression, and loneliness—it was her struggle for respect. ‘Some people have been unkind,’ she once said. ‘If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don’t expect me to be serious about my work. I’m more serious about that than anything.’ Marilyn wanted, above all, to progress and improve, but we don’t let her change—because then we’d have to change our minds and admit that she was one of America’s great success stories, instead of one of its favorite tragic myths. In truth, Marilyn Monroe offers one of the purest instances of the old American promise of reinvention.” Source: themarilynreport.com

Aesthetic value is a catch-all term that encompasses the beautiful, the sublime, the dramatic, the comic, the cute, the kitsch, the uncanny, and many other related concepts. It is a well-worn cliché that the practical person scorns aesthetic value. But there’s reason to think that it is the only way in which we can draw final positive value from the entire world. Thus, to the extent that we care whether or not we live in a good world, we must be aesthetically sensitive. We want to say that we are part of a good world, and even contribute to its goodness. And if we can say this, the value of our own lives is considerably more robust. Yet the world is, for the most part, not morally good. And even if people stopped treating each other so brutally, it is not clear that this would deliver a definite positive value so much as eliminate a definite negative value. In contrast, aesthetic value is precisely a way in which we can get positive final value from the world at large. 

The value of a beautiful or sublime thing is final because it needs no justification. There is currently some debate over whether depression cuts one off from appreciating beauty, but the philosopher Tasia Scrutton has plausibly argued that depression may only undermine the enjoyment of cheerful sunny scenes, and not the appreciation of the aspects that resonate with one’s condition while also elevating and dignifying it. Just as the dissonant chord in a piece of music is redeemed as part of a larger harmony, so disease and disorder can be redeemed when understood as parts of a larger grandeur. The world is not a jolly place, not a Walt Disney world, but one of struggling, sombre beauty. The dying is the shadow side of the flourishing. Part of the initial motivation for aestheticism was the failure of moral value to give us a positive value for the world. It is thus part of aestheticism to take moral evil seriously. In fact, we need not appreciate suffering to appreciate the person who suffers. Again, we can turn to the aesthetic version of sympathy. This is the aesthetic value we experience when we enjoy sympathetic characters in a fiction, but it is equally applicable to real-life individuals. It is aesthetic because it does not rely on having a personal relationship with the other person. 

Rather, it involves enjoying their rich and poignant individual qualities: the complexity of both charms and flaws that make up their character. It is an aesthetic version of the basic drive for love – the sense that a person is lovable, though we may not be in a loving relationship with them. Our aesthetic analysis of bad people is entirely compatible with morally condemning them. From an aesthetic perspective, we can curiously explore and be fascinated by evil, while also taking practical steps to minimise it wherever possible. –by Tom Cochrane (author of The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States (2018) and The Aesthetic Value of the World (2021). Source: aeon.co

"Blonde" is not Marilyn Monroe (reviews)

"Biographical facts regarding Marilyn Monroe should be sought not in Blonde, which is not intended as a historical document, but in biographies of the subject." -Joyce Carol Oates (in the preface of Blonde, published in 2000 by Fourth State Publishers)

Donald R. McGovern: During the ten years that I have researched Marilyn’s life, reading books, watching documentaries, I have read and watched enough fiction and biographical distortion of that remarkable woman to last me a life-time. One of the publications that I read―or I should more accurately admit, attempted to read―was Blonde, the novel. Admittedly, after reading and grimacing through approximately sixty-five percent of that grating and grotesque book, I stopped. I considered putting a match to it, but, despite my revulsion, I put it in a more than appropriate place: a garbage can. I have not uncovered any reason at all for me to expose myself to Blonde, to force myself to endure what one reviewer called a ”fundamental failure” and what a majority of the movie’s assessments dismissed as a jumble, a shamble of exploitive, misogynist garbage, a movie that “should never have been made.” So, I have not watched Blonde: I never will. Why was such a movie produced? Who is to blame for such a uniformly disliked and criticized movie about a beloved actress who died sixty years ago? 

Why would sentient human beings involve themselves in such hubris, arrogance and hatefulness? Were they so blinded by what they could fictionalize and film about Marilyn Monroe that they failed to ask themselves if they should? And, too, why would they produce such a rank dishonest movie and then assert, as if gripped by delusion, that what they had produced was actually meant to be a love letter to Marilyn Monroe, meant to be a panegyric? Who is to blame for creating a movie that one reviewer called “a morbid, leering and tasteless abasement”? I expect that Ana de Armas more than likely rendered a fair approximation of the planet’s most famous blonde, or any other actress for that matter, would ever be able to render, not only due to the impossibility of duplicating that which cannot be duplicated, but primarily because Ana was not provided with a character, a person to render who even remotely resembles the real Marilyn Monroe. I don’t blame Ana de Armas. I blame Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote the diabolically ridiculous novel, and Andrew Dominik, who wrote and directed this diabolically ridiculous movie, who has now directed a total of four whole movies, a man who has dismissed Marilyn’s cinematic career, and by extension, the work of the men and women who produced her movies. Dominik has reduced Marilyn’s films to being “cultural artifacts” meaning that her films and her performances are merely examples of the era during which they were produced and are devoid of any meaning otherwise. 

According to one reviewer, Dominik must believe that Marilyn’s “performances were shaped by her agonies and somehow happened by chance, by fate, or because she’s a mystical, magical sex bomb. That’s grotesque, and it’s wrong.” The artisans involved in producing Marilyn’s movies just happened to be some of the best that worked in Hollywood during its Golden Age. Additionally, many of her films were guided by the artistic visions of directors now considered to be all time greats: John Huston (The Asphalt Jungle and The Misfits), Billy Wilder (The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot), Howard Hawks (Monkey Business and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Henry Hathaway (Niagara), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve), Joshua Logan (Bus Stop), Fritz Lang (Clash by Night) and Sir Lawrence Olivier (The Prince and the Showgirl). The first three men combined directed 105 feature films, were nominated for 148 awards, including Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs. Billy Wilder is considered by some cinema experts the greatest screenwriter of all time, with 25 screenplays on a lengthy resume, including Some Like It Hot, a movie that many cinephiles and cinema experts consider to be the greatest comedy ever made. 

For those authors to be reduced to producers and creators of mere “cultural artifacts,” it indicates and exemplifies the unfounded arrogance of Andrew Dominik, not to mention his narcissism. One reviewer noted that Dominik “is a scumbag”; but then the reviewer added: “He’s also a blowhard.” Another reviewer humorously suggested that Dominik should “jump up and down” and “let us hear ‘em clank together,” Dominik’s brass testicles I have concluded. I have not uncovered any reason at all for me to expose myself to Blonde, to force myself to endure what one reviewer called a ”fundamental failure,” and what a majority of the movie’s assessments dismissed as a jumble, a shamble of exploitive, misogynist garbage, indeed a movie that “should never have been made.” Unholywood and its resident practitioners have frequently engaged in biographical revisionism while retreating behind a shroud of artistic or poetic license, a cloaking device they employ like the curtain concealing Oz; but Blonde just might be the most egregious example of playing fast and loose with the facts and therefore fast and loose with the truth appertaining to a person’s life, in this case, the life of Marilyn Monroe. Virtually nothing in the Blonde novel and therefore nothing in the Blonde movie is factual or truthful.

Blonde is a fictional, ghastly, grotesque and self-indulgent semi-pornographic excursion into exploitation by both the novelist Oates and the film’s director Dominik. Evidently Dominik additionally adapted and transmogrified an already hideous version and vision of Marilyn Monroe into an even more hideous version that more appropriately reflected his own myopic and puny, narrow-eyed vision of who and what Marilyn was and also what her life meant. Both the novelist and the director obviously―proven by the many salvos fired during their pathetic campaign―loathe Marilyn Monroe and each took deadly aim at her heart. What is the movie Blonde actually about? What is its purpose? Unquestionably it is simpler to stipulate what the movie is not about: it is not about Marilyn Monroe, it is not about her life. As Ann Hornaday, in her review for the Washington Post asserted: “Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel is a morbid, leering and tasteless abasement. Reductive, ghoulish and surpassingly boring, Blonde might have invented a new cinematic genre: necro-fiction.” In an interview with Christina Newland, Dominik briefly discussed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in reductive and chauvinistic terms. I hasten to report that New German Cinema auteur, Rainer Fassbinder considered Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to be one of the top ten movies ever made, not just among musicals but movies ever made. High praise, indeed. On Fassbinder’s top ten movie list, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Howard Hawks resides in the sixth slot. Dominik's clueless comments explain every choice he made regarding his depiction of a woman that he obviously does not understand and for whom he feels no affinity, sympathy or empathy.

Quite frankly, the movie’s purpose is simply this: distastefulness. “I’m not concerned with being tasteful,” Dominik admitted. That is certainly self-evident. And he was not concerned at all about the facts or the truth about Marilyn. Certainly, that is also self-evident. “It’s all fiction anyway, in my opinion,” he announced, meaning that everything about the blonde movie star and the events appertaining to what Dominik called her mysterious life, are actually fictional, made-up, created by Hollywood’s fame machine. Blonde is an accurate and truthful depiction of fictional events that actually never happened, a fictional life never lived by his real woman subject. Is that an oxymoron or a paradox or an oxymoronic paradox or simply just meaningless Orwellian doublespeak? During an interview, Dominik admitted: “OK, she wrested control away from the men at the studio, because, you know, women are just as powerful as men. But that’s really looking at it through a lens that’s not so interesting to me.” What Dominik found interesting was a view from Marilyn’s cervix as a speculum entered her vagina and a view from inside the toilet bowl while she vomited. 

In favor of the preceding disgusting and disrespectful scenes, Dominik egregiously ignored Marilyn’s cinematic career and what one reviewer noted was her “transcendent talent, the brilliant comic timing, the phrasing, gestures and grace.” Blonde intentionally ignores Marilyn’s rare gifts, her dedication to the craft of acting and her constant reach for improvement, not only in her craft but her everyday life as well. But more importantly, perhaps, Blonde ignores Marilyn’s fundamental humanity and her shrewdness in order to create a perpetual victim, which she most certainly was not. Marilyn Monroe was kind and generous and according to everyone who actually knew her, she had a wonderful and devilish sense of humor. According to Robert Mitchum, Marilyn was generous to a fault and a witty, naturally funny girl; but evidently, Blonde does not contain a single shred of humor. As Farrah Nehme Smith wrote: “I’d prefer to think that was some kind of grim joke, but Blonde is anti-joke, in the sense of antimatter or an antihistamine.” So true, and I think that is downright pathetic. 

Perhaps there is not a just punishment for writer and director, except maybe being condemned to spend eternity planted upside down in a bucket filled with the fecal equivalent of their cinematic concoction: donkey dung. But then, unlike Dominik’s stupid movie, I don't want to sound ridiculously hyperbolic. Still, I know that Marilyn’s singular quiddity will survive this most recent cinematic debasement, just as it has survived all the senseless debasements heaped upon her during the past six decades. Long after Joyce Carol Oates and Andrew Dominik have shuffled off this mortal coil, long after Blonde and its creators have been forgotten, the woman they have treated with utter disregard will remain the planet’s most famous woman, loved and revered by billions. As Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis proclaimed after Marilyn’s death: “she will go on eternally.” Source: marilynfromthe22nrow.com

Armond White: Ignoring how Marilyn Monroe calculated her career and contrived the unique acting style that mesmerized the world, Andrew Dominik resorts to the visual equivalent of psychobabble: Deranged, expressionist distortions, lacking Baz Luhrmann’s silliness or Ken Russell’s ingenuity, that resemble strained pop-music videos. Ana de Armas, a funny presence in the mystery comedy Knives Out and horror comedy Knock, Knock, has certain mercurial flashes. But without Monroe’s ebullience, she winds up doing a superior version of Madonna’s Marilyn impersonation. Here’s the problem: Dominik can’t define stardom when celebrityhood itself is in trouble. Maybe because there are no actors to respect these days. Blonde has been produced by Brad Pitt’s company Plan B. The main caveat is we never see ambitious Monroe’s work ethic or her joy. We don't have any clue why Monroe was cast by the sexual sophisticate Howard Hawks, the gritty John Huston, the cynical/romantic Billy Wilder, the artful Otto Preminger or the empathetic aesthete George Cukor. 

Even Monroe’s most accomplished acting in Joshua Logan’s 1956 film of Willliam Inge’s Bus Stop and her star-to-star competition with Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl are omitted. When the CIA secretly aborts Monroe’s JFK zygote, Blonde climaxes as political porn. Dominik innovates a from-the-inside view of a vaginal curette, because the film’s process is inherently dehumanizing. We shouldn’t have to be thinking about Netflix gaslighting Marilyn Monroe while our government and media are gaslighting us, but Blonde is another example of Millennial distraction by way of decadence. “There is one thing wrong about this film,” Paul Schrader posted on Facebook. “I was thunderstruck by Andrew Dominik’s kaleidoscopic approach, juxtaposing colors, screen formats, camera styles, music, sound effects, and image manipulation. But it’s not Marilyn Monroe. This would have been far better if it was freed from Monroe's history. The criticism applies to the novel as well. Why the gleeful need to jump on Monroe’s cadaver for a romp? Can’t these fabulators trust their own creativeness? Was their need to exploit irresistible? Dominik made an innovative film, but it wasn’t about Marilyn Monroe. His film is now a curiosity. Some critics say Dominik did Marilyn no favors. I think it’s the other way around. Marilyn Monroe did him no favors.” Source: www.nationalreview.com

The US federal government released the FBI papers related to Marilyn Monroe in 2012, in response to a FOIA request by the Associated Press. Timestamps on the documents start around 1955, the year she began dating suspected communist playwright Arthur Miller. By the early 1960s, the FBI made it clear that Marilyn Monroe had no ties with the Communist Party USA. “Subject’s views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Community Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles,” one agent said in a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. But that didn’t stop the FBI from continuing to investigate Monroe. The most recent documents in the trove are dated 1973, more than a decade after her death from a barbiturate overdose on August 4, 1962. The FBI’s fascination with Monroe, her whereabouts, her relationships, and her political affiliation was nowhere to be seen in Blonde (2022), though documents show the government spared no resources in tracking the icon around North America. “They start following her right after she gets involved with Arthur Miller,” retired UCLA history professor Lois Banner, author of Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, told The Daily Beast. “She’s married to this person they think is proto-communist.”

Much of the trove of documents focuses on Monroe’s trips to Mexico, where she allegedly mingled with members of the American Communist Group in Mexico (ACGM). There, she reportedly spent a lot of time with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, a descendant of the railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, known for his radical leftist politics. According to the FBI, she arrived in Mexico on February 19, 1962. No longer with Miller, her entry into the country was reportedly arranged by Frank Sinatra. One source “advised that during the course of the visit a mutual infatuation arose between Monroe and Frederick Vanderbilt Field. This situation caused considerable dismay among Miss Monroe’s entourage and also among the ACGM,” the report states. The FBI names Eunice Murray, Monroe’s housekeeper, as a source of this story, though Lois Banner disputes this. “The FBI is not completely trustworthy. They sometimes make things up.” Source: themarilynreport.com

Julie Forrest: There is something so ugly and disturbing about Joyce Carol Oates’s interpretation of Marilyn’s life that if one were to take away the author’s name, one would suspect it was written by a loathsome mysogynist, hell-bent on destroying every last vestige of humanity in Marilyn Monroe, movie-queen, and Norma Jeane Baker, innocent dreamer. Oates’s fangs come out. She reveals to us her secret loathing for Marilyn, sub-consciously played out. Knowing how much Norma Jeane abhorred being written about in her Marilyn persona, Oates revels in ignoring her plea. “I’m always running into people’s unconscious.” Those words, prophetically spoken by Marilyn Monroe, shine quite a light on this fictional pseudo-biography. Oates seems to have run smack into the middle of her own “unconscious” while trying to explore Marilyn’s, and the result is quite ugly. It simply seems to derive from a sense of frustration, typical of a snobbish bookworm, an ugly duckling like Oates envying a powerful sex-symbol (Marilyn) who attracted (besides a loyal public), the likes of Sinatra, DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, Robert Mitchum, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Paul Newman, or JFK. Oates's take on Marilyn's life lacks cohesion and substance. Oates writes at the beginning that those looking for a true biography should look elsewhere. Fair, but in constructing her alternate reality, Oates should have at least given it a veneer of truth to ground the points she was trying to make. Source: goodreads.com

Arthur Miller in his memoir Timebends: A Life (1987): "To have survived, Marilyn would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes. She was a whirling light to me, all paradox and enticing mystery, street-tough one moment, then lifted by a poetic sensitivity that few retain past adolescence; meanwhile her adult self stood aside observing the game. And ultimately something nearly godlike would emerge from this depersonalization. To be with her was like moving out into a kind of sanctifying light from a life where suspicions was common sense. She had no common sense, but what she did have was something holier, a long-reaching vision of which she was fitfully aware: humans were all need, all wound. What she wanted was not to be judged but to win recognition from those blinded to her humanity by her perfect beauty."

Attorney Corey Santos, an expert in Entertainment Law residing in Reno (Nevada)—whose legal career was highlighted by the significant precedent setting case Flamingo Hilton v. Gilbert—has advised entertainers, producers, directors and politicians. Santos assures: "I will not watch that fake film [Blonde]. It seems many have sadly tried to darken the legacy of Marilyn and JFK by focusing on this innuendo as opposed to their achievements. Marilyn Monroe certainly deserves better remembrance. She was an outstanding actor and entertainer. Interestingly, my office in Reno is across the street from the Virginia Street Bridge where Monroe threw her wedding ring into the river in “The Misfits”. While filming here, she stayed at The Mapes hotel which also used to be directly across the street from my office. As to what happened to her there are so many theories. Perhaps when her psychiatrists records are released in the next decade we will get answers. May she rest in peace and her real legacy be remembered."

James DiEugenio: "This story got completely out of control. Blonde is based on a novel! Let me repeat that: A novel! And then the director added even more fiction to the Joyce Carol Oates' novel for one reason: to sensationalize it even more. Sensationalism sells. There are only a few responsible writers in this field: Donald McGovern, Gary Vitacco Robles, Donald Spoto, Nina Boski... I might be missing others, because April McVea wrote a kind of week by week with Marilyn book. That is really valuable for responsible writers. There was never any kind of  "affair" between JFK and Marilyn or RFK and Marilyn. In fact, there is no evidence at all about Bobby and Marilyn. The people that writers like Norman Mailer, Donald Wolfe or Anthony Summers have used to create this mythology are not credible. And this has been demonstrated at length. As John Gilmore said, Norman Mailer started an industry which Gilmore called, "Trash Marilyn for a buck." This is a continuance of that industry. But it also has an appendage; trash the Kennedys for millions. I’d like to suggest that we attempt to separate the JFK conspiracy from the Marilyn Monroe conspiracy. The first is a legitimate attempt to right an historical wrong. The second is meant to sully the Kennedy brothers." Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

Lainey Gossip review of "Blonde": "The film inherits all of the book’s faults, and Dominik only exacerbates and enhances those faults, and adds to them, as cinema allows for visceral storytelling in a way novels can never match. Where the novel at least asks us to consider Norma Jeane’s voice, the film ignores it. Dominik simply isn’t interested in Marilyn Monroe—let alone Norma Jeane—as a person. Blonde is a hollow egg with nothing at its core, just a mélange of scenes that trace Norma’s rise and Marilyn’s downfall. His style emphasizes the nightmarish quality and unreality of the scenes, and the overall effect suggests Marilyn’s deteriorating mental health. Where Blonde fails both its subject, and its audience, is in its total lack of interiority. Oates at least tried to restore Norma’s voice, Dominik doesn’t seem interested in her at all. This is a film that tells us Arthur Miller fell in love with Marilyn after seeing her read a monologue from one of his plays but doesn’t show us that monologue. Marilyn was not just her suffering, she was a whole person, complicated, yes, but also a survivor. With nothing to balance that darkness, Blonde becomes lopsided, until it eventually falls over. Dominik’s Marilyn remains a cipher, despite de Armas’s best efforts to anchor the misery with humanity and not just suffering." Source: laineygossip.com