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