Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Icon: The Life and Films of Marilyn Monroe

According to the author, Norma Jean was born deprived. She came from a long line of frontiersmen with a family history of alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse. There were broken homes, failed foster placements, and failed marriages. Childhood was spent in poverty, teenage years were spent in WWII factories. She came from a background that was nothing but lousy, and ended up with her life being dictated by the studio system

Icon portrays Jewish leftist playwright Arthur Miller very positively, in contrast to studio boss Harry Cohn. Like most movie moguls, Cohn expected to have his way with his “stars” and tried to get Marilyn onto his yacht while his wife was away. She refused, he fired her.  Miller, however, she always recounted as a gentleman, married at the time, who didn’t try to take her to bed. It was Miller who introduced her to intellectual pursuits, like bookstores and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. Unfortunately, she was stuck in the Hollywood studio system, and it dictated what the actresses could wear, eat, say, and do in their free time. It even dictated which men they could date. She escaped into pills.

As the book progresses, we learn that she was suspicious of men, thanks to the sexual abuse she endured as a teen, but at the same time she was eager to please. It portrays Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio as perfectly decent and moral, but she had trouble adjusting to any kind of stable life. Worse, as discussed in many other books, he doctors were all quacks. He therapists engaged in practices that would today be considered inappropriate.


This is a great biography. It tells her life story against the backdrop of not only the studio system, but the way society dealt with women at the time. Nowadays actresses can start their own production companies, move on to direct movie, and we have women in all aspects of production. In Marilyn Monroe’s time, however, the studios treated women like any other company did. Lifestyles were dictated, and there was no opportunity to advance.

No comments:

Post a Comment