Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Wilder, Bert Stern… Five works to go beyond the Marilyn Monroe myth

THE MORNING LIST

Died August 4, 1962 at the age of 36 in Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe forever embodies the glamor of the 1950s and 1960s. On the occasion of the sixty years of her death, “La Matinale” offers five works to go beyond the myth.

“Blonde”, by Joyce Carol Oates: an American tragedy

“Blonde,” adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’ bestseller, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, will be released in November on Netflix.

Originally, Joyce Carol Oates imagined a long story of a hundred pages, the last words of which would have been “Marilyn Monroe”. The American novelist finally embarked on writing a long-term book and let herself be caught up in her subject to the point of offering Blonde hair one of the greatest books ever devoted to an actress.

Marilyn Monroe’s childhood, where traumas accumulated, fascinated the writer. There is at home the little girl who discovers the cinema in the company of her mother, the orphan whose mother is diagnosed insane, the woman who changes her name to become an actress and the star who turns into an icon, with the price to pay for it. As Joyce Carol Oates remarks so well, before being baptized Marilyn, the actress does not exist. To believe that Norma Jeane Mortenson, her original surname, does not constitute a passport to existence – as the novelist writes, “nothing is more dramatic than a ghost”.

Of her relationship with a distant father, whom the actress turns into an idol, to the point of calling her husbands and lovers ” father “, of the humiliating treatment suffered by men, of her association with President John Fitzgerald Kennedy who grabs her by the nape of the neck, directs her head towards his fly in order to relieve her urges and immediately abandons her, of a wasted life in spite of brilliantly talented, Joyce Carol Oates draws an epic tale. Not just a Hollywood story – an adaptation by Andrew Dominik starring Ana de Armas will be released on Netflix on November 24 – but the tale of an American tragedy.

“Blonde” by Joyce Carol Oates, translated from the American by Claude Seban, Le Livre de poche, €10.90.

“Some Like It Hot” by Billy Wilder: An Actress on the Run

This is obviously one of the peaks of Marilyn Monroe’s career, under the direction of a filmmaker, Billy Wilder, at the height of his talent.

Escape is the recurring motif of Some like it hot with cross-dressing at the heart of the scenario. Two jazz musicians, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, must disguise themselves as women to join an orchestra of female musicians after witnessing an assassination committed by mobsters. In the female orchestra is Marilyn Monroe.

Billy Wilder perfectly integrates the qualities of the actress, nor a great actress, even less the hollow blonde that was designated at the time. “Marilyn walks on two left feet”explained Wilder – a way of indicating that this woman was unlike any other, of also emphasizing that she excelled in comedy.

Obvious when we see Some like it hot. In a film whose mainspring is dissimulation, she is the only one here to hide nothing, to never play comedy. It is, however, the center of gravity. The reason is simple: Some like it hot is, so to speak, offered to him. She benefits from the main close-ups of the film, because it is she that the director wishes to hunt down.

Within this comedy, therefore, a documentary on the actress is sketched, based less on her sex appeal than on her immense charm. A happy Marilyn Monroe emerges there. Discovering her like this was part of the pleasure taken by the spectators in 1959, the year of the film’s release. Seeing Marilyn Monroe again today, in the light of what we know, with a star struggling against depression, makes us take stock of what we have lost: an actress who simply loved life.

“Some like it hot”, DVD and Blu-Ray, MGM/United Artists, on hire from €2.99 on La Cinetek, Orange and Canal VOD.

“The Marilyn Monroe Mystery”, by Emma Cooper: the actress by her intimates

In the provided and disappointing universe, documentaries devoted to Marilyn Monroe, the one available since April on Netflix stands out more from the lot, with the merit of addressing the conspiracy theses around the actress, in particular the controversial circumstances surrounding her death. . The Marilyn Monroe Mystery: Untold Conversations is adapted from Anthony Summers’ bestseller, The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (Les Presses de la Renaissance, 1986), which detailed the links between the star and the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as well as with his brother, Robert Kennedy, Secretary of State for Justice.

Above all, Anthony Summers had kept an audio copy of the 650 interviews he had conducted for this book. More than thirty years later, director Emma Cooper, confronted with this material, said to herself that there was material here to make a documentary of it. Anthony Summers managed to interview the filmmaker John Huston, author of Axes, – Marilyn Monroe, of which it is the last complete film, shares the poster with Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable -, Billy Wilder, members of the family of the psychiatrist of the star, Ralph Greenson. Or Eunice Murray, the maid who discovered the body of the actress, on the night of August 4 to 5, 1962, died, according to the diagnosis of the medical examiner, of a probable suicide.

This succession of testimonies paints an intimate portrait of the actress, all the more convincing since these voices are part of her inner circle. The limit is the method used by the documentary with actors in the role of relatives reciting a text, with a false realism that undermines the thesis of the film, that of a woman victim of men, cursed in a way, because unable to choose the right people.

“The Marilyn Monroe Mystery: Untold Conversations”by Emma Cooper, available on the Netflix platform.

“Norman Mailer. Bert Stern. Marilyn Monroe”: the model’s goal

Photo taken from the book “Norman Mailer. Bert Stern. Marilyn Monroe”, published by Taschen.

In 1962, Marilyn Monroe accepts a photo shoot for the magazine vogue, conducted by Bert Stern, and finally edited by Taschen, with text by novelist Norman Mailer. Bert Stern takes 2,700 shots, spread over three sessions taking place in as many days. This is the last shooting of the star, who will die six weeks later.

The meeting, in a suite at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles, takes place under the auspices of the party. During the first session, Bert Stern shares three bottles of Dom Pérignon 1953 with his model. The alcohol seals the trust between the two. The result is the actress’ most heartbreaking photo shoot and, ultimately, the star’s biggest photo book.

Marilyn Monroe agrees to undress partially, fulfilling the wish of Bert Stern who wants “photographing Marilyn in its pure state”. The latter is one of the great portrait painters of his generation. Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, the couple Alain Delon-Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, passed in front of his lens.

Bert Stern is at the top of his art, and Marilyn with total mastery of her modeling profession. Far from freezing the actress in the tragedy, Bert Stern makes her appear as a woman of sexual freedom of the 1960s, an icon of modernity and the symbol of an era that she will never have the chance to live.

“Norman Mailer. Bert Stern. Marilyn Monroe, Taschen80 €.

“Marilyn and Me”, by Lawrence Schiller: light and shadow

Photo taken from the book “Marilyn and Me”, published by Taschen.

Lawrence Schiller photographed Marilyn Monroe on the set of Something’s Got to Give by George Cukor, the star’s final shoot – the film remains forever unfinished, due to his untimely death.

After reading the script, the photographer noticed that there was a scene in this comedy where the actress had to dive into a pool and pretend she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. The scandalous side of this scene had attracted his curiosity, less because of the induced voyeurism, but because it allowed the photographer to find the truth of the actress. Exposing her did not mean undressing her, but seeing how she was hiding, what this mythical session reveals, with, at the end, a series of unforgettable photos.

This idea of ​​diving naked in the swimming pool, while the script provided for a swimsuit, comes from Marilyn Monroe. His agent was against it. Lawrence Schiller then pointed out to the actress that if she was famous, she would make the photographer, with this shot, an equally famous man. “Larryreplied the icon, photographers can be easily replaced. » She had dived into the pool so quickly that the photographer was forced to get ready for his next photo: Marilyn at the edge of the pool, putting her leg and arm down to eventually get out, and letting her face appear.

This shot has since gone viral, less because of the scandal it captures than because of what this star is trying to hide here. The filming of Something’s Got to Give had taken place in complete chaos. Marilyn Monroe, brought pale by the doctors, almost never came to the set. When she appeared, it was in a context that had nothing to do with the cinema, as on April 9, 1962, at a fundraiser for the Democratic Party, where she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the tenant of the White House. Lawrence Schiller does not capture a star in the simplest camera, he photographs a shadow.

“Marilyn & Me”, by Lawrence Schiller, Taschen€50.

We would like to thank the author of this write-up for this remarkable material

Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Wilder, Bert Stern… Five works to go beyond the Marilyn Monroe myth