The 50th anniversary tribute to Marilyn Monroe

I did a lengthy tribute to Marilyn two years ago exactly (click MM label below) pondering what the 50th anniversary would be like, and now here it is - with the expected tributes in all the quality (and not so..) press.

As I mentioned before I was 16 then in Ireland and remember the coverage - we heard the announcement on the radio while sitting in deckchairs that Sunday afternoon, after having seen BUS STOP that Saturday night, the 4th of August, while events were unfolding in California ...

These though are the images that stayed with me, as that Monroe cult took off in the 60s with all those books and features: those last photos by George Barris that day at the beach, and the subject of several books and posters. 
I had that TOWN magazine when I was 16.  As a child I saw her on all those American movie magazine covers, LIFE magazine and the rest - and that first time I became aware of her, in that red swimsuit in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE...    As I say too in that earlier tribute she accomplished so much in that brief time - 1950 to 1962, aftrer being a Fox starlet and party girl for the likes of Elia Kazan, then those roles that got her noticed in ALL ABOUT EVE and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, her breakthrough in 1953, consolidated in 1954 and 1955, (her vocal talents and how she looked in those years, as per my other posts on her, Marilyn Monroe label); then the move to New York and forming her own company with Milton Greene (who also took some marvellous pictures of her), then those last films where it seemed to be harder and harder for her to be Marilyn. Then that new Marilyn for the '60s ... while Taylor was marrying huckster producers, crooners and that Welsh actor squandering his talent MM had linked up with America's sporting hero, one of its greatest writers and THE political family ...

I was obsessed about THE MISFITS for a long time in that pre-video age and had to attend revival screenings and never miss a television showing ... just like I had been with James Dean and EAST OF EDEN.  

Apart from the films those great photographs by Barris, Eve Arnold, Bert Stern, Milton Greene, Bob Willoughby and the others will always be in circulation.  

Looking at the '50s objectively now it was Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor who were at the top of the tree of female stars, along with Audrey and Grace; and then the likes of Kim, Janet, Doris, Debbie etc as well as new girls Lee Remick, Shirley McLaine, Eva Marie Saint, Joanne Woodward and that grown-up Natalie Wood; Brigitte and Sophia were discovered in Europe joining Gina and Silvana;  those '40s new girls like Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner and Lauren Bacall came to maturity ... while the older Lana, Rita, Vivien, Olivia and sister Joan, June Allyson, and that great 30s quartet of Bette, Joan, Katharine and Barbara kept working [Loretta, Norma, Margaret, Irene had retired or gone to tv], Ingrid Bergman was "forgiven", Anna Magnani was imported for a few roles; new girls like Sandra Dee, Carol Lynley, Dolores Hart, Jean Seberg and England's Kay Kendall arrived, and that 'second tier' comprising Anne Baxter, Cyd Charisse, Vera Miles, Jane Russell, Martha Hyer, Joan Collins, Dorothy Malone, Yvonne De Carlo, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Ruth Roman, Debra Paget, Hope Lange et al were also busy, and then there was Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg. Thats a list! Here's some more: Dana Wynter, Angie Dickinson, Jane Wyman, Carroll Baker, Diane Baker, Barbara Rush, Patricia Owens, Virginia Mayo, Donna Reed, Jan Sterling, Dorothy McGuire and another 30s gal Rosalind Russell, and Eleanor Parker and Maureen O'Hara were still working - have I missed anyone? Well yes, those stylish intelligent actresses equally at home on the stage as in movies, like Glynis Johns, Claire Bloom, Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury, and of course Marilyn's one-time room-mate Shelley Winters, one of the busiest gals of the '50s ! British viewers also had their own sirens in Belinda Lee and Diana Dors, as well as leading ladies like Sylvia Syms and Yvonne Mitchell.
 (The early '60s saw the first stirrings of Jane Fonda, Ann-Margret, Pamela Tiffin; and Julie Christie, Susannah York and those British girls... and Deneuve and Dorleac, Moreau, 1959's Best Actress winner Signoret and 1961's Loren plus Schneider, Cardinale and Vitti heading the European contingent, while Faye Dunway and Jacqueline Bissett burst on the mid-'60s scene along with those Redgrave girls...).

 

Marilyn

I was going to title this "Remembering Marilyn" but really she has never been away, despite the fact that it will be 50 years since her death in 2 years time in 2012. I dare say Fox will be marketing her once again with "50th Anniversary editions"! She will still be making money for them despite they not paying her that much in her lifetime...

The 4th of August 1962 [it was a Saturday night] saw 16 year old me seeing a revival of BUS STOP (for the first time) at our local cinema in Ireland ... the next day, Sunday afternoon, we were sitting in deckchairs in the garden talking about it, when a newsflash came over the radio .... the rest of the '60s saw us doing the whole Marilyn thing with the revival houses doing double features and all those early books .... by the '70s the likes of Norman Mailer and then Gloria Steinem (with the Barris pictures) were getting in on the act and those great photographs by the likes of Eve Arnold, Milton Green and that Last Sitting by Bert Stern were in wide circulation - any photobook (and there were plenty) on Marilyn sold! The pictures I liked most were the George Barris sets taken at her house (its now on the market again for over $3m.) and at Santa Monica beach where she looks amazingly fresh and re-invented for the '60s. SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE was going to be re-activated [she looks wonderful in the fragments that remain, and she certainly got Liz Taylor's CLEOPATRA off the world's magazine covers with her nude swim shots] but it may have turned out to be another damp squib like the very tedious (apart from her musical numbers like "My Heart Belongs To Daddy") LETS MAKE LOVE where her looks varied from scene to scene. I think Cukor was not really the right choice for her last two Fox films - it seems he did not have any empathy with her and considered her mad in subsequent interviews [tough dames like Crawford and Hepburn were the kind of women he liked associating with]. Her best later movies were of course all made away from Fox - she never looked better as photographed by Jack Cardiff for THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL and she steals the film from Olivier, and then of course the reams that have been written about the making of it and Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT and Huston's THE MISFITS but her Sugar Kane Kowalski and Roslyn Taber are still spellbinding creations. The rumours of conspiracies about her death will continue, but I think the Spoto book gets closest to it, being an accidental overdose. That Sinatra crowd were all well used to various uppers and downers (as is casually referred to in THE TENDER TRAP). Jack Cardiff captures her perfectly in his chapter about her in his memoir MAGIC HOUR, which makes most of the other MM books redundant.

My first introduction to Marilyn [apart from all those '50s magazine covers she was on] was seeing her in that red swimsuit in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE which is still great fun, NIAGARA and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES of course, her early bits like Miss Caswell in ALL ABOUT EVE. I also like the 1954 Marilyn: it seems she only did THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS in order to get THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH but she holds her own marvellously here with the other show biz veterans and her 3 numbers are riveting: "After you get what you want you don't want it", "Lazy" and of course "Tropical Heatwave" - another of Jack Cole's great musical sequences. She also has some nice wistful songs and teams well with Mitchum (particularly when he gives her that rub down in the blanket) in Otto's sort of western RIVER OF NO RETURN. Marilyn was also a great vocal artist, her Fox recordings bear up well and fit those movies perfectly.

But back to those timeless pictures taken at the beach by George Barris a few weeks before her death - they look like they were taken yesterday! I had a big poster of the one with her sipping champagne on my wall for years... she looks as fresh here as the sweet young girl photographed sitting on the highway back in 1940s California....she changed (and achieved) so much in 12 brief years, from 1950 to 1962; she may have become too unstable to last much longer - who can say now?, but at least she, the essence of the '50s, was there for the start of the '60s. Perhaps only Garbo was loved more by the camera... Like Dean its impossible to imagine her in her 80s or going the blowsy route like her onetime room-mate Shelley Winters.