Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,695

This is the grave of Marilyn Monroe.

I don’t think we need a regular biography of one of the most famous women in American history and one that literally every reader of this site knows well, so let’s just discuss some of the issues with her life.

First, my God did this woman overcome a lot. Terrible upbringing, biological father who stole her older siblings, life in orphanages after her mom was hospitalized for schizophrenia, the almost inevitable sexual abuse that happens to kids in the system, her growing into that body. She married at 16 to a factory worker only because she was dating him and he was transferred to West Virginia and if they didn’t marry, she’d have to go back into the orphanage. Her ending up doing pin-up photos seemed almost inevitable.

Second, I have a lot of respect for Monroe the actress. That’s not because she ever really became a great actress. She didn’t. She became a functional actress. But she tried so hard and I respect the hell out of that. She actually divorced her factory worker husband because the film studios were nervous about hiring a young actress who would almost certainly get pregnant and let’s just say she had her priorities. She studied and worked so hard to succeed. The earliest film I’ve seen her in was All About Eve, where she plays the ditzy blonde aspiring actress and it was so hard for her to move beyond those kind of roles. The male gaze defined her career and she did what she could within that but watching so many of her films, even the great ones, it’s hard to get over how over the top this was. Even as she became the biggest star in the world in the 50s, with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, both from 1953, The Seven Year Itch, from 1955, and of course Some Like It Hot, from 1959, it was all about her body and how men couldn’t resist it and that was kind of it. My favorite Monroe film is her last, 1961’s The Misfits, which was also Clark Gable’s last film. Directed by John Huston, it really shows Monroe’s advancement in her art after her time working with Lee Strasburg at the Actors’ Studio. But even here, in what is a nearly great, great film, the film still screeches to a halt when any new male character looks at Marilyn for the first time.

Also, how could I not like Niagara, from 1953, a pretty good film where her character is named Rose Loomis, one of the better Loomises in film character history (there’s more than you’d think!)? And when she married Arthur Miller, she converted to Judaism, leading Egypt to ban her films. Gross.

Third, sadly, Monroe did not have good taste in men. Joe DiMaggio was a real piece of shit to her when they were married, including physical violence. Of course DiMaggio was just as much a personal disaster as Monroe. To give him a tiny bit of credit, he really did try to intervene at the end of her life when he could tell that she was going downhill in a hurry, but that doesn’t even begin to make up for how he treated her. Also, fuck John F. Kennedy and Bobby too for that matter. The men she worked with largely had contempt with her too. She became known as “difficult” by the late 50s, demanding a lot of retakes. Tony Curtis especially treated her poorly in Some Like It Hot and compared kissing her in scenes to like kissing Hitler. She and Billy Wilder fought all the time on that set too. The thing was that Wilder was as difficult as Monroe under any definition, but of course it was OK for a male director to be that way. The one person who did treat her well was Clark Gable on The Misfits, who fought John Huston for a larger role for Marilyn. The irony of this is that Gable had to fight Arthur Miller on it too and he had written the film to give his wife a serious dramatic role, even as their marriage was failing! Laurence Oliver had also treated like nothing but not a blond sex goddess on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957 and she hated him for it.

Fourth, I don’t think a single living person can really quite understand what it must have been like to be MARILYN MONROE. To have your body scrutinized by every living human, to never be able to act without those curves being central to the story, to have men throw themselves at you all the time. We’ve had sex symbols ever since the beginning of mass media culture, but there’s no one who was the kind of phenom Monroe was. How does one go through such a hellish upbringing, look like that, have such enormous success, and come out normal? I don’t even see how anyone could have that head on their shoulders. And Marilyn didn’t either. Drugs were a useful way out and she liked her pills. A lot. Toward the end, makeup artists usually did their work on her when she was passed out from the pills. She had tried to have children, but had endometriosis, survived ectopic pregnancies, I mean that was tough.

Monroe died in 1962, from a pill overdose that was probably a suicide. She was 36 years old. Joe DiMaggio barred the Kennedys from attending her funeral. Also, Arthur Miller, who she had recently divorced, didn’t bother showing up either. It had taken Miller about 5 seconds to start dating someone else after their relationship ended. But still, no credit for DiMaggio playing Keeper of Marilyn’s Legacy after he beat the shit out of her.

Also, when I heard Michelle Williams was playing Marilyn Monroe in a biopic, I thought that was a bizarre casting choice and maybe it was, but Williams is one of the greatest actors in the history of American film and she absolutely nailed the role, even if the film itself was kind of whatever.

And here’s that utter scumbag Hugh Hefner in relation to her grave, a plot he bought so he could sexually harass her into the afterlife. Burn in Hell Hef.

There’s much, much more to say. But let’s leave it to comments.

Marilyn Monroe is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit other actors who worked with Monroe, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Tony Curtis is in Las Vegas, Nevada and George Raft is in Hollywood. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.