Marilyn Monroe
“Like me, she didn't get out of bed in the morning for less than ten thousand dollars...”
“...Or in it for that matter”
Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 - August 5, 1962) is a legendary dead movie star known for her sexy figure, classiness, and natural beauty, whose films many people have never seen. They only know her from television clips, photographs in restaurants, and that emo Andy Warhol's paintings. Many other people have seen and loved her movies. Those people argue that she is the perfect woman.
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, her talent agency quickly insisted that she change her name. When young Norma contested that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, they curtly replied "Not if it was called Norma Jeane, it wouldn't". Pointing out that she should have a name that is "simple and rolls off the tongue... just like you", "Marilyn Monroe" came into existence. Would people have still found her so mysteriously attractive had she been called Norma Jeane? I doubt it. It's a horrible, horrible name.
Moving Pictures
In mid-20th Century Hollywood, actors and actresses who achieved stardom had to be either hooked on drugs or alcohol, and were then prostituted until they died or, in the case of women, turned 40. Marilyn Monroe’s life - and death - was a classic example of this stratagem. The executives at Twentieth Century Fox retained all of the money, as well as to the rights of her image and her movies. Marilyn received in return a burial crypt next to Hugh Hefner, who has had a strategically placed hole carved into the wall.
Marilyn acted in an age of movies where wit, innuendo, and hyperbole were used in place of nudity and sexually explicit scenes. Instead of Marilyn, say, sitting in a chair in front of twenty policeman while crossing and uncrossing her legs to expose her vagina, she would simply stand fully clothed without moving and breathfully deliver a line of dialogue--"It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on."
Like many dead movie stars Marilyn's films are rarely found in video rental stores, and must be obtained from public libraries, netflix, or from your grandad's porn collection (Don't tell him it's not porn, he thinks it is. And he may be right, Marilyn walking down a street has the same effect on most males as any porn movie yet made). Below is a list of her films that may seem vaguely familiar:
All About Eve (Nothing about Adam)
All About Eve was Monroe's first really big film, and is really only remembered today for her appearance (despite her being in it for maybe 40 seconds of screen time). It was also the first film that 20th Century Fox allowed her to get up from her knees. Monroe's "dumb blonde" character was a huge success with audiences, who insisted that she continue playing the role for the rest of her career, despite the fact that she was really quite intelligent, a natural brunette, and rather enjoyed being on her knees. Hey, a whore's gotta pay the bills somehow!
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Bums, rude guys, and lesbians prefer blondes too, but gingers are gaining on the rail)
Mix Monroe, Jane Russell (the rich man's Monroe), a geek, an old guy, a boat and a silly plot, and you've got Marilyn singing "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend". That song, and Monroe moving around and talking in this film, made a star out of the young actress, and introduced her to Hollywood's elite. Marilyn's role of Lorelei Lee, a breathy gold digger (that's gold-digger as in "shallow, money-grabbing whore", not "toothy old man with a pick axe") earned her an invite to put her handprints in the cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Monroe, however, thought it would be more appropriate to imprint her ass into the pavement, declaring "No one comes to see my movies for my hands". Much like the famous Penny Lane road sign, Marilyn's assprints are regularly stolen. I mounted one in my shower.
How to Marry a Millionaire (Out-of-date title. Millionaires now fill your bags down at the Jiffy Mart.)
Millionaire starred Monroe in glasses, some other women...and some guys. It won some Oscars. Probably had a plot... All you really care about though is that red dress Marilyn wore.
The Seven Year Itch (Damn! Crabs?)
In The Seven Year Itch (named for the legend that most affairs begin after seven years of marriage) Marilyn played the attractive affair-ee who lures away husband Tom Ewell from bland wife Evelyn Keyes. In a key scene, Monroe stands with Ewell while the air from a subway grating blows her skirt up. The scene is considered to be the both the birth, and highest peak, of the panty shot. A large crowd watched as director Billy Wilder ordered the scene to be refilmed many times, ultimately demanding 72 takes and personal ownership of the dailies. Among the crowd was Joe DiMaggio, who was infuriated by the spectacle. Monroe, on the other hand, loved it being the very classy lady she was.
Bus Stop ("Put your bra in the overhead, ma'am")
An over the top performance by an actor who even Monroe forgot as soon as filming ended. This guy supposedly never left his ranch until he took a bus trip to a rodeo. He meets Monroe, and practically rapes and kidnaps her in his enthusiasm to marry Marilyn and to take her back to his isolated spread in Montana, where he wants her to "milk his cows" for the rest of her life. While this guy 'berserks himself' all over the place, in every scene he's in--and words can't do his performance justice--Marilyn, just by walking, talking, breathing and singing, steals all the scenes she appears in. The contrast of Monroe being Monroe, something like a shining living Goddess, acting with this manic-ADD guy who's like a herd of bulls in an entire shopping mall of china shops, is disquieting. Is he the inner man unleashed or the inner boy untamed? Both. Just as she yearns to be both. That's the only possible level on which this tripping-barrel-of-monkeys movie actually works.
Some Like it Hot (And some like it mild)
In 1959, Marilyn starred alongside fellow legends Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in one of the funniest and sexiest movies of all time; Some Like it Hot. The film follows Lemmon and Curtis as two Chicago musicians who disguise themselves as women to escape the Mob. They join an all-girl band where they meet the troubled and curvaceous Sugar Kane (Monroe, playing against type). Hilarity ensues as they struggle to hide the embarrassing protrusions that threaten to ruin their disguise.
Monroe was famously difficult on set, having declined further into her depression and drug addiction. She was regularly late and often refused to take orders from the director, both on set and in the bedroom. Curtis said kissing her in their love scenes together was like "kissing Hitler". He was speaking from experience, of course. Still, it didn't stop him from sticking his Jew in her gas chamber between takes.
Let's Make Love (Okay! Whoops! Never mind)
A French millionaire falls for Marilyn (what are the odds?) when he goes to trash a play based on his life. To get into her pants he comes up with a fake name and auditions for the part of playing himself. Hilarity follows. Does the boy get the girl? The title of the movie seems to provide the ultimate spoiler.
The Misfits (Marilyn, an old guy, and a horse. Grandpa's nirvana.)
Here's another strange one. As a teen Marilyn idolized actor Clark Gable. Now here she was, in his last film, riding around a barren prairie with him in a modified jeep chasing a wild horse in order to sell it to a glue factory. Again, the symbolism of a free spirit under attack. Well played, Mr. Gable, well played.
The Misfits is one of those slow black and white films where nothing really happens. As such, it got excellent reviews, but went down at the box office like Marilyn at a wrap party. And as if the sparse, minimalistic plot wasn't hard enough to concentrate on, the nearly dead Monroe is at her most beautiful here, plus Gable's character's name is "Gay" (the other characters address him as such totally straight faced).
After filming The Misfits and attending Clark Gable's funeral, Marilyn was working on Something’s Got to Give when she "died (i.e. murdered like a dog)". Only 37 minutes of it was ever released, just enough time to finish the popcorn, pull off a fast one, and bid our free spirited Goddess adieu.
Sexiness
Marilyn is sexier than anyone you’ve ever met in 3D. She parlayed sexiness into a career. Cue cards for every shot? Forty-one takes for a single scene where all Marilyn does is answer the front door and sign for a package? Acting at its best.
Marilyn became aware of her sexiness after junior high school. She noticed that the elapsed time between when men looked at her face and then to her bosom was getting shorter and shorter. She also noticed that whenever she left her panties at home and climbed trees that all the boys would give her their lunch money--teachers, principal, and school bus driver included. It didn’t matter that she didn’t finish the eighth grade, men were not listening to what she was saying anyway. In 1959, the United States Census Bureau estimated that at any given moment sixteen thousand males were thinking about her while putting the Kleenex kids through college.
There has been much speculation on why Monroe was considered to be so attractive. Author/guru/druggie Robert Anton Wilson said her secret was always seeming and talking like she was just about to have an orgasm, as if every man watching her could tip her over the edge at any moment they chose. I think this is a bit over-analytical, and it was just because she was such a whore, which excited men in their plain suits and black ties in such a conservative era.
There are rumours that Monroe was sexually abused in her teenage years (I mean, who could resist? It was her or the sheep...), and it has been suggested that this abuse inspired the hypersexuality in her adulthood. This theory was later dismissed, however, when people realised that the doctor who concluded it was giving her his lunch money.
However, her 'delicious-easiness' may also have arisen from the fact that Marilyn never experienced an orgasm. Never! Not once in her entire -mindless-sex-filled life! Which doesn't say much for Joe DiMaggio's batting technique or John Kennedy's profile in courage. If she were still alive today, there is no doubt that a charity would have been founded to amend this. I'd insist. And my donation would be right up there, front and center.
Divorces
Back then, Marilyn was a movie star’s movie star. Unlike today's celebrities, she didn’t date losers and then dump them for the headlines. Marilyn dated and married winners. And then, she divorced them when she found a bigger winner! No kidding. She was a ho's ho, and there is no proper way to put it politely and still be honest about it. I mean, she kneeled for the President of the United States! If she were born 40 years later, she'd be doing Oscar winning pornos and be First Lady of America.
Marilyn divorced her first husband because he was a nobody, and she was an up and coming somebody. We will respect Marilyn’s wishes and not mention his name here. She seemed happy with another husband, New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio. But they were incompatible, as her often-pointless ramblings drove poor Joe crazy and, as Marilyn told the divorce judge, watching baseball three times a week should itself be considered ‘mental cruelty’. She divorced her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, because old habits die hard.
Death and cover up
Marylin Monroe was murdered by the CIA. While they tried to blame it on the mafia, some gangsters of the time responded by saying "Nah, don't give me that malarkey. We don't kill people by putting sleeping drugs up their butt. We have a sleeping pill called a bullet. It's made out of lead and is administered into the patients head. Ya want a prescription for one?".
Marilyn was found in a fake-looking death position. "It was like someone set her all up." said the officer who arrived at the scene. "Usually overdose victims vomit or have seizures, or at least are giving the world a dead frozen finger. But Miss Monroe looked like she just fell asleep. She even had a teddy bear in her arms, and was using her blue blanket."
The coroner changed his report at least three times, and the maid changed her story every few minutes for the rest of her life, which ended when she mysteriously died just as she started feeling guilty and was going to tell the truth. And then there's the mysterious Kennedy deaths--John, Bobby, Rose, and Teddy, all killed by Joe DiMaggio or one of his biographers for their "connection" to Marilyn. But to kill her? The CIA just went too far. They just went too far this time, sir, and we want an explanation.
Other stories don't match up either, like the maid saying there was a light under the door, but the carpet was so plush that no light could be seen through the bottom crack. Her door was locked, a door which she had never locked before in her life--because, of course, nobody would walk in an unlocked door knowing Marilyn Monroe was in bed on the other side. She had just called Joe DiMaggio to ask him "Where have you gone?", and she was obviously far too drunk to shove such a ridiculous amount of sleeping pills up her ass. If you want me to try an experiment, and see if I can shove a large amount of pills up Monroe's dead ass, then I'm game, but we'll either have to pay off the graveyard guy to open the crypt or give him his turn at bat.
So, bottom line, she was sexy, and changed the world by not hiding the fact that she enjoyed sex. She bedded presidents, baseball players and comedians, and was killed by the CIA--probably out of jealousy because they'd gotten no bounce themselves.
An inglorious end to a glorious and not-soon-to-be-forgotten life.
