9 - 15 August 2001
Issue No.546
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 August 2001 Issue No.546 |
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Limelight
Forever Marilyn
She stood trembling and shaking in her shimmery, slinky, beaded eggshell gown, which clung to her perfect body, like a second skin. She took an uncertain step towards the microphone set on the stage and in her familiar breathy voice, with eyes half closed, her full lips parted, she faintly whispered "Happy Birthday Mr President!". It was 29 May, 1962 and Mr President had just turned 45 and his glamorous well wisher was the love goddess of the age. He was John Kennedy and she was Marilyn Monroe.
It was her last public appearance -- three days later she celebrated her 36th birthday, 3 months later she was dead! They laid her beauteous feeble body under the warm welcoming earth in a small crypt at the northeast corner of the Westwood Memorial Cemetery, up on a tiny hill beneath the shade of an old evergreen and the fiery golden leaves of a burning bush. She was laid to rest on 8 August, 1962.
Had the gods not chosen to take her away so soon, she would have celebrated her 75th birthday, 1 June, 2001. But celebrations are underway nonetheless. The first collection of her films to be released in DVD format came out -- "The Diamond Collection," contains the newly restored versions of five of her films, Bus Stop, Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire and There's no Business Like Show Business as well as an exclusive documentary on the 'Final days of Marilyn Monroe', and 40 minutes of never before seen footage from her last unfinished film Something's got to Give. Special tours are held daily of her home, her burial place, the hospital where she was delivered, the apartment and hotel where she lived before her big break. Sotheby's is auctioning an exceptional collection of 517 pictures, some new and uncensored. Reproductions of her own pieces of jewelry, bracelets, earrings, rings and pendants, are selling like hot cakes, to the very young, whose parents were not even born when the legend began.
Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch
She burst on the scene after the grey and dreary days of World War II. It was a time of laissez-faire. The world was free and easy after the restrictions and confinements of the war years. She gave us a feeling of shamelessness. We forgave her foibles and shortcomings, we understood her weaknesses and vulnerability and we wanted nothing bad to happen to her. The love goddess of the fifties was born Norma Jeane Baker on 1 June, 1926, the illegal child of a mentally unstable mother, Gladys Baker and a non-existent father, Jim Mortenson. Norma Jean was only 9 when her mother was committed to a mental institution. She lived between orphanages and foster homes until she married the boy next door, Jimmy Dougherty, in 1942, when she was barely 16. During the war years he was sent to serve in the South Pacific and she went to work in a munitions factory, and did some modeling. She caught the attention of Howard Hughes who tried to sign her for his R.K.O. studio, but 20th Century Fox beat him to it. They dyed her hair, changed her name and for the next two years she appeared in small roles in a series of forgettable films, 1948 -- 1950. 1950 was a good year. She was cast in two classics, Asphalt Jungle, directed by John Huston, and All About Eve, directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz. The studio took notice and cast her in Niagara in 1953. Like the gushing waters of the famous falls she flooded the screen with her beauty and sensuality. Her charm, her instinctive talent and that unique allure of innocence and voluptuousness made her irresistible to all. She was raised to super star status.
She was by no means alone in the glamour arena. The fifties were the golden years of Hollywood. There were other stars, queens and goddesses of the silver screen. We saw the likes of Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and Kim Novak, and across the ocean there was Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. And then there was Audrey Hepburn, and again and again there was Audrey Hepburn. While that ethereal wisp of a girl appealed to your spiritual and intellectual instincts, the curvaceous, humorous, down to earth Marilyn appealed to all your instincts. There was just no one like Marilyn. Her vulnerability and sensitivity saved her from being vulgar and tawdry and put her in a class by herself, way above her imitators.
But was she ever truly happy? She had two failed marriages; baseball's superstar, Joe Dimaggio, 1954, and playwright Arthur Miller, 1956. She left Hollywood and joined Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio in New York City. Prominent stage and screen actress Kim Stanley said about her actor's studio colleague, after a performance in an acting class: "She was wonderful. We were taught never to clap at the Actor's Studio -- it was like we were in church -- and it was the first time I'd ever heard applause there."
Multidimensional Marilyn started her own production film company, producing Bus Stop, directed by Joshua Logan, 1956, and The Prince and the Showgirl, in 1957, directed by Sir Laurence Olivier, who also starred in it. He was full of praise for his co-star: "She is a brilliant comedienne, which to me means she is also an extremely skilled actress."
Her collaboration with Austrian, genius director, Billy Wilder produced two classics. Who can forget the famous scene in The Seven Year Itch, 1955, when Marilyn's skirt blows up over her waist from a gust of air from an underground vent! The second was the unforgettable masterpiece, Some Like it Hot, 1959. Wilder said he wanted to make every film that was presented to him with Marilyn. "She has a certain indefinable magic that comes across, which no other actress in the business has." In her last completed film The Misfits, 1961, written for her by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston, she gave her best dramatic performance. Her co- stars the vigorous and virile Clark Gable said: "She makes a man proud to be a man," and in contrast, the sensitive introvert Montgomery Clift said: "Every pore of that lovely translucent skin is alive....I adore her!". She was all things to all men. They all wanted to protect her and they all wished to possess her. But the 'candle in the wind', though still burning brightly, cannot challenge the wind for long. Marilyn was tired and weary, and on the set of her last film, Something's Got to Give, she made nine appearances in 32 days.
The Fox studio was losing money daily, but Marilyn had discovered her :"valley of the dolls". She popped pills to sleep, pills to wake, pills to work and pills to play.
She was always tired now. She took her sleeping pills and floated away to a lovely garden full of beautiful blooming spring flowers, daffodils, daisies and hyacinths. She ran towards them but suddenly they were no longer flowers, but ugly ghouls and demons with popping eyes and hairy paws and long sharp nails. They were tugging and pawing, pushing and gnawing at her delicate creamy skin. "They'd all like a sort of chunk out of you" she thought. She tried to run away, she tried to protect herself but they were overtaking her. She stopped to look at her reflection in the stream. Her flesh was torn, her hair was thin, her cheeks were sunken and her eyes were puffy. The beautiful porcelain doll was scratched and bruised. She heard soft voices beckoning. The gods were calling their human child home, as they have others like her -- Mozart, Van Gogh, James Dean, Princess Diana. "She was but a lily-girl, not made of this world's pain." She woke up -- and she was beautiful, whole and happy again.
It's been almost 40 years and here we are celebrating, commemorating, elegising and remembering. She will always be the quintessential star of love and beauty. The gods were good to her and to us too, for she will be forever Marilyn, young and desirable, luscious and luminous even at 75. Happy Birthday Marilyn!
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