[Trigger warning: sexual abuse.]
Lots of folks (present company included) have at one point or another, adorned their bedroom/livingroom/bathroom wall with a poster of Marilyn Monroe. It’s totally reasonable – she was a mega-babe. But to me, there are only two ends of the spectrum when it comes Monroe-mania: the first is the lover of the flirty, red dress-wearing Marilyn; adorned in diamonds, and pouting at the camera. And that’s okay. That’s a love of Marilyn: the Brand. The firmest proof that marketing done well can create a cash-cow in the form of a beloved icon.
But then there’s the empathetic category: the Norma Jeane Devotee. Those who look a little beyond the cheesy Hollywood caricature, and instead see the doe-eyed innocence, open vulnerability, creeping insecurities, and the desire to be loved – all subtly resonating from the lesser-noticed sensitive soul behind the charade. Someone with whom we can empathise, and even relate.
In the late 1940s, some misogynistic Hollywood dick-for-brains looked at a young Norma Jeane and money signs appeared in front of his eyes. He would go on create what he perceived to be the female epitome of the American Dream in the form of a voluptuous blonde with zero brain cells – and it was a genius formula really, because here we are, almost sixty years after her death, still talking about her.
I find it somewhat depressing that one of the world’s most famous icons is such a strong presence in popular culture – even today – and yet, she is still so grossly misunderstood. Part of this Hollywood creation was the imperative detail that her brain capacity must appear to be similar to that of a garden gnome’s – the more dense and bobble-headed the better – because sadly there is a demograph of heterosexual men (both then and now) who like their women to be thick as pigshit. But let’s not open up that can of worms tonight…
One of Hollywood’s best-kept secrets is Norma Jeane’s surprisingly high IQ, as well as her love of books, poetry, and psychology – subjects far from bimbo fodder. So as a little tribute to the intelligent face behind the ditzy mask, here’s a few lesser-known facts that the old-school douche elite of classic Hollywood would rather you didn’t know.
– Norma Jeane LOVED to read. She owned a library in her home, and was a fast and avid reader. Her closest friends described her relationship with literature as ‘devouring’. She tackled the volumes by writers that even keen readers, such as myself, have yet to either get through or fully comprehend, such as James Joyce, Proust, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Whitman, among others. She also had a special fondness for Jack Kerouac, and the other literary bone-daddies of the Beatnik generation. She was married to the playwright Arthur Miller for a few years, whose circle of literary friends were both surprised and delighted by his wife’s love of books.
– She wrote poetry – and she was actually rather good. A collection of her poems, letters, notes and general musings were discovered a few years ago and were published as a book titled Fragments (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013) giving a never-before-seen insight to her life behind the glittering lights of showbiz. Her poems depict a sometimes dark and troubled mind, riddled with insecurity and frustrated with the full-time role of being Marilyn Monroe, as well as the loneliness of her marriages (and life in general), the craving of stability and the desire for strong female role-models in her life. Here was someone desperately searching for deeper meaning in life. Desperately searching for safety nets beyond the flimsy, fickle ones provided by her wealth and career, and who was trying to find ways of expressing herself beyond the realms of the often-shallow one-dimensional roles doled out by her agents.
– She studied at UCLA. There are a LOT of fake Marilyn Monroe quotes knocking around on the internet. None more so than that bloody “If you can’t handle me at my worst blah blah blah”, but one of the actual legit ones is her response to a reporter’s question as to why she was rarely seen at parties and premiers early in her career: “I was going to school. In the day I was attending auditions and rehearsals, and in the evening I was taking classes in English and History.”
– She also studied at the Lee Strasburg Institute in New York. Now, for anyone unfamiliar with the name, Lee Strasburg was the founder of the Method approach to acting. His best-known clients include Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and James Dean. His lesser-known clients were a bunch of people I’ve never heard of… and Marilyn Monroe. Her time at the institute wasn’t particularly a hush-hush affair, but it’s not overly common knowledge either. The reason is this: there have been long-standing debates about Norma Jeane’s skills as an actor, and this is largely down to the systems Hollywood had in place to control its stars. Basically if you were an actor, up until the early 1970s, you had next to no rights, and very little say in the roles you took. As I mentioned earlier, Marilyn Monroe was a brand first and a person second, so the roles her agents obtained for her were largely opaque, simple characters that mirrored her public persona.
– She was one of the first females in Hollywood to publicly admit the film industry is rife with sexual abuse. Long before anyone had heard of Harvey Weinstein, or uttered the words “me too”, Norma Jeane had famously outed what is now commonly referred to as the ‘Hollywood couch’ – a polite euphemism for ‘If you want this role, get on your knees.’
– She was incredibly street-smart. This was a girl who came from one fucked-up background. So much so, no one (including Norma Jeane herself) actually knew what her surname was. Basically, it’s either Baker or Mortensen. There was clearly some overlapping around the time of her conception, and her questionable excuse for a mother never knew which one was the father. Her mother was schizophrenic, and for large chunks of little Norma Jeane’s childhood, was both physically and emotionally unable to care for her. This resulted in a musical chair-style upbringing of being dotted around between aunts, foster parents, and even an orphanage. She grew up fast, which probably helped her navigate her way through the choppy, shark-infested waters of Hollywood, but also likely left her craving love and stability, and resulting in a vulnerable, predator-exposed and lonely personal life.
– She was difficult to work with. The term that was commonly used in reference to her work attitude was ‘dark perfectionist’. She was riddled with nerves and anxiety about her performance, and often insisted on numerous takes of even the most simple scenes, which frequently infuriated her co-stars and directors. She often delayed production by locking herself in her dressing room; crippled with self-doubt, and too embarrassed to come to set. She wanted to add complexities to the characters that just didn’t exist, and wanted to go beyond the bimbo persona, but because these characters were often synonymous with the MM persona, she wasn’t able to do so, which left her feeling like a failure.
One thing we all know is that there has been much iffiness surrounding the circumstances of her death. There are theories – all of which have both strong possibility and holes in the evidence. Maybe we already know what happened. Maybe we don’t. Maybe we never will.
Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe died at home alone on the 4th of August, 1962, at the age of 36. She was/is loved by everybody for their own reasons, but her complex truth is what should be remembered over the silly façade. Her softness and her sensitive, vulnerable light that still remained, despite the harshness of her life.
[All words are my own, unless quoted otherwise, and are subject to copyright. None of the images are mine. I’ve done my best to correctly credit them, but no copyright infringement is intended if I managed to balls up the references.]
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