Marilyn Monroe Appreciation

ihttp://cakonos.image.pbase.com/image/11781318.jpg

She could sing, had great comedic timing and something that just draws you in. I grew up watching old movies and the first Marilyn I saw was Gentleman, (mebbe why it is my fave) but I was a fan on the spot.

Between me and my neighbors/best friends prob. have all her films and we trade backa nd forth regulraly and can always when undecided abt a film sink into onen of hers.

Yeah. Though her figure is bangin', son.

http://kopteri.net/koti/milaja/mm/img/films/Film21.jpg

bangin what?

http://www.wheelsoffdesign.com/hof/hurley/hurley.jpg

Oh well, nevermind! I'm going to rent MM movies this week!

Spencer, to start check out Gentlemen, Let's Make Love for the songs (the Porter take on Lolita for one) & How to Marry A Millionaire for the two Betty's ensemble act (others would prob. add Some Like It Hot but I'm mixed on that)

Also, Ally, didn't you post that link in the old thread?!

Niagara
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
There's No Business Like Show Business
Born Yesterday
Love Nest

"Don't Bother To Knock" is my favorite film - her performance in that one really went unappreciated I think. The Seven Year Itch is really quite funny, though.

http://www.walrus.com/~gibralto/books.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/14/postmarilyn_2.jpg

An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man was just sold to a New York businessman for http://www.nypost.com/seven/04142008/news/regionalnews/hard_core_marilyn_106443.htm.5 million

oops NY POST story

He never moves into the shot, indicating that he knew the camera was there, but Monroe never looks at the lens

there's a joke about amateurism in here somewhere but i'm tired

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-marilyn-50-years-gone

certainly seems like it should be possible to make a good tv movie abt her but this lifetime one is not it

its worse than the 2001 joyce chopra one b/c while i do generally love kelly garner, poppy montgomery was better and plus that one had wallace shawn as her 1st agent

will be interesting if andrew dominik ever gets his adaptation off the ground

I'd be willing to watch a Mary Harron scripted/directed MM biography, mostly on the basis of The Notorious Bettie Page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHkzAvda61o

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=marilynmonroe&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=&utm_content=buffer8252d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterbfi&utm_campaign=buffer

Would have turned 89 today.

xp the misfits is so bad, and not even hipster so-bad-its-good fetish bait afaict to justify all those screenings

I thought it was uneven for sure, and had one terrible drunk scene from Gable, but I didn't think it was bad--thought Monroe was kind of affecting.

My only memory of The Misfits is that is was very slow, heavy and stilted. But I was pretty young, so my tastes were biased toward action over drama and maybe it wasn't quite as draggy as I recall it being.

I'd be willing to watch a Mary Harron scripted/directed MM biography, mostly on the basis of The Notorious Bettie Page.

― We'd like to conduct a wobulator test here (Sanpaku), Monday, June 1, 2015 4:54 AM (16 hours ago)

yeah, agreed!

the mailer biography is actually not that bad, you just have to every now and again forgive/ignore horrible lines like

Still, there is a difference, Lester could address Ida as his mama, Norma Jean could not; both could undress (at least once) in the front yard to examine each other, but Norma Jean was the one who would catch the blame--it is part of the scenario of dread in the mind of the Silent Majority that a boy's penis is, on occasion, exhibit able, but murder draws a rifle sight on open vagina.

& here, I'm afraid, is an outtake. pic.twitter.com/1WxLzIKZh6

— Christina Newland (@christinalefou) September 27, 2022

So its sounding like this thing is pretty much a disaster, huh?

Yup. Also makes for a pretty good interview.

Reading The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America, and--documenting how the ABA botched trying to sign Kareem out of UCLA--there's mention of how his father was part of the police-department band that backed Monroe when she sang "Happy Birthday" for JFK.

HB MM, 100 today!

https://i.postimg.cc/Twpb8dF0/s-l1200-3.jpg

Review of new book about Marilyn and her avid reading habit:

https://archive.ph/arAiX

Inside Marilyn Monroe’s private library and the misogyny that erased it

Reading _The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America_, and--documenting how the ABA botched trying to sign Kareem out of UCLA--there's mention of how his father was part of the police-department band that backed Monroe when she sang "Happy Birthday" for JFK.

i'm not sure she would have had the cruelty in her to be a convincing Grushenka. but i like that she wanted to try.

Just learned recently that Capote wasn't happy with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast in Tiffany's and really wanted Monroe instead. I'm biased by my love of the movie, but that just seems wrong to me. I like Monroe fine in other films, but I can't see her as Holly Golightly, or at least not in the context of the film Blake Edwards made.

Will probably embarrass myself here: outside of Sammy Davis Jr. and Monroe herself, I don't recognize anyone in that photo.

Uh, at Tiffany's.

the guy on the couch is photographer Milton Greene
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Greene

the guy with the stripey tie is actor Jeff Chandler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Chandler

the guy in the sweater vest is talent manager Jess Rand

don't know who the woman is

Jeff Chandler!

(xp)

That was the party for Sammy Davis Jr. when he came home from the hospital after the car accident when he lost his eye (Jess Rand was Sammy's publicist and that's whose house it was).

Gail Crowther's Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz is one of the better Plath-Sexton sorta bios, and, boy, am I sick of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIIEbrMXs20
HBDx100!

I heard there was going to be some kind of Marilyn Monroe Appreciation event on the South Lawn of the White House this month

took me a minute but i get it, good joke

MoMA had a major retrospective earlier this year in celebration, and more or less the same program is now running at Film Forum.

I caught many of the MoMA screenings because I hadn't seen any of her films in quite a while, and indeed it reminded me how great she really was - once tremendously underrated as a film actress and likely still underrated. For anyone looking into her work, it's nearly impossible to avoid knowing anything of her private life given the endless discussion about it, but as difficult as it may have been behind-the-scenes, the result on-screen leaves the impression (or illusion) of someone in complete control of their performance in terms of how they look to the camera and more specifically what to do and what to convey through every facial feature, spoken word and gesture. Some films are much better than others and having a great director or writer is no guarantee (The Seven Year Itch is lacking in a lot of ways, so is Let's Make Love) but Monroe consistently delivered.

Some Like It Hot, Gentleman Prefer Blondes and River of No Return remain my absolute favorites, all great films and she gives a great lead performance in all of them. (She has either minor roles or supporting parts in All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle or Monkey Business, but they're all great as well and she's memorable in all of them.) Don't Bother to Knock is probably the one lesser-known Monroe film I'd recommend most - very good film noir with great performances from her, Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft. The plot and story might've needed some more finessing, but the cast and atmosphere put it over - the climax is both harrowing and genuinely heartbreaking.

it's nearly impossible to avoid knowing anything of her private life given the endless discussion about it, but as difficult as it may have been behind-the-scenes, the result on-screen leaves the impression (or illusion) of someone in complete control of their performance in terms of how they look to the camera and more specifically what to do and what to convey through every facial feature, spoken word and gesture.

...whose coherence amazes me given how every one of her directors, from Mankiewicz to Hawks to Wilder, attest to how they had to film her line by line because she could not play a scene without flubbing dialogue. They're like Teo Macero to her Miles Davis.

One of my favorite Marilyn Monroe references is in "Wonder Boys." I haven't seen it for years and years, but iirc there was a subplot involving her (alleged) sweater, and when it's finally tried on by someone (Michelle Williams?) they comment, steeped in melancholy, on its small size.

xp Pretty much every time I saw one of her films, I would look it up, and inevitably you'd have some variation of how much of a mess she was on any given day. Reasons may differ, but the point is, she was never there on-time and well-prepared and ready to hit the ground running. It really is remarkable getting through ONE film like that and having the finished film show off an incredible performance, but to have that happen again and again, it's really mind-boggling.

I'll admit, I'm too young for her charms -- she never once did for me as sex object or actress. But I accept her cuz I like Gentleman Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot.

Carole Lombard, however.

MoMI did a mini-restrospective called "Marilyn Monroe in New York" or something like that. I went to see The Seven Year Itch on a Saturday because there was Q&A to go with a book signing event, but I've never liked it much and still don't really. But then I went back on Sunday to see Don't Bother to Knock which they were showing in the little theater which I enjoyed much more, it was a real discovery for me.

My take is that she had a real comedic talent and wit that Hawks was able to develop and showcase, but she also had some kind of crippling anxiety for no doubt obvious reasons which is the reason for the multiple takes and stitching together of a performance.

That's all true and those mistakes aren't visible in her performances; she just leaves me cold.

One interesting thing that arose out of the Q&A and maybe I've also read elsewhere is that she had a very good relationship with and felt relaxed around the still camera, but the moving one was a different story altogether.

That's all true and those mistakes aren't visible in her performances; she just leaves me cold.

The New Yorker just reposted an essay they published on Monroe in 1997 and included this in the caption:

Robert Mitchum, who starred alongside Marilyn Monroe in “River of No Return,” once said about working with her, “Every time a director yelled ‘Action!’ she’d break out in a sweat. . . . I mean it. She was scared.”

(xp)
There is something potentially off-putting about the whole 50s blonde bombshell thing in general. It sometimes seems more palatable when presented in quotation marks as a kind of neurosis by Sirk's direction of Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind.

Just remembered that while watching The Seven Year Itch I started wishing it was another Tom Ewell movie, The Girl Can't Help It. Not for Jayne Mansfield, but for Little Richard, Gene Vincent and, almost forgot, Julie London.

GWB is on TCH as I type.

Re: The Seven Year Itch, I think the inevitable bowdlerization severely hampered it from the start. Some say a stronger lead than Ewell was needed too. I'd argue that the film's awkwardly made - the CinemaScope format is never made to feel more than an ill-fit. (Compare it to River of No Return where it not only makes logical sense but is composed and blocked masterfully one shot after another.) Monroe's great in it though - if I had to pick two great moments (and they're not the most famous one), it would be the part where she explains her job which is almost like looking at the nuts and bolts of her acting and the part where she creates open access between both floors - she has a great close-up that captures both the innocence of her character and what she appears like to someone else like Ewell, the intended source of the film's comic tension but in hindsight it doesn't pay off that often except in a moment like that.

I think her performance is maybe fine but, as you say, because of the way the film is written and constructed it's missing something, so it ends up being kind of the lowest common denominator of that The Girl character she's done much better elsewhere. And yeah, Billy Wilder blamed the censors.

And now just thinking how many takes it would have taken if she had ever worked with William Wyler.

Kind of an unstoppable force meeting immovable object combinational explosion of retakes.

Also thinking that in order to get her at all I had to sort of sidestep various minefields of approach/avoid related to too obvious sexxiness and rescue fantasies.

GWB is on TCH as I type.

xps Without the sex that was in the original play, the feeling of guilt intended in the third act scenes doesn't really fly. As a result, the film leans in more on genuine paranoia, and to be fair it might've worked perfectly if they had refined that more, but as-is it doesn't really pay off.

otoh, the lack of sex does amplify what we have in Monroe's version of that character, someone who is immediately established as an innocent made all the more vulnerable by her looks, a frequent target of aggressive heterosexual men, and that gives the movie a tension that's more powerful than Ewell's neuroses. Regardless of his struggles, he was going to be fine - it's Monroe that you really have to worry about. When she expresses a relief that he's married ("I wouldn't be lying on the floor in the middle of the night in some man's apartment drinking champagne if he wasn't married"), the response is only written for laughs ("that's an interesting line of reasoning") but one can also feel immense pity that this character's going to get really hurt someday, and you don't need to know the tragic details of Monroe's life to think that.

otm

I remember watching and liking River of No Return during a Mitchum jag, maybe can revisit this month.

FWIW, the play originally cast Ewell opposite Vanessa Brown, and Paulette Girard would later appear opposite Ewell. I can't say what their performances were like - not sure if that's possible at this point - but at least in photos, it's difficult imagining them matching the child-like aspect of Monroe's performance in the film.

River of No Return is great all-around - when I first saw it, I remember thinking Mitchum was a model in terms of how to behave like a parent to your kids.

A few things haven't dated well as a reflection of the political realities of the time (besides the role of Native Americans, Mitchum makes his feelings known in a way that's problematic), but they're a small part of the film.

Forgot that Mitchum worked side by side at the Lockheed plant with Marilyn's first husband.

crazy coincidence!

Also somehow forgot about Natasha Lytess.

Ha, no less an authority than André Bazin himself singled out River of No Return for its effective use of CinemaScope.

Farran Smith Nehme's appreciation published in Sight & Sound's new issue celebrating Monroe's centennial.

(Monroe, Miles Davis, John Coltrane...quite a year for centennials!)

sad to think that of the three main stars of The Misfits, only Montgomery Clift made another film... and just one more

The Sight & Sound article wasn't actually available online when she first posted about it on Monday so thanks.

You're welcome! I actually found it because Farran eventually shared it herself. She initially thought people would have to buy the physical issue, so she was pleasantly surprised when she saw it online.

Yeah, I noticed the alert from her after you had already sent it.

The thing in the New Yorker was also good, can't recall if I linked it or if anyone else did

Not sure if I am even remembering correctly

An except from an intro to one of the centennial coffee table books iirc

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/marilyn-monroe-made-being-photographed-into-an-art

I may have to pick up that issue. It's kind of sad how tough it is to get a physical magazine nowadays. It's not REALLY tough if you're near a Barnes & Noble, but I remember when you could walk into any drugstore and they'd at least have all the major publications.

Yeah

lol in the UK any random WH Smith’s in a given month will have entire issues dedicated to like, idk, Pedro Pascal or Billie Eilish

i mean i like physical magazines as much as the next middle-aged man but i'm not sure how many titles dedicated to passenger planes one small island nation needs

River of No Return is at the FF today at one.

Digging into this thread and whattyaknow, James Redd, we were at the same screening/Q&A of Seven Year Itch! (I did not love the picture but thought Monroe was pitch-perfect in it.)

Cool! Are you also going to see River of No Return at one pm today at the Film Forum?

Anyway at that Q&A I felt that Sam Shaw's granddaughter was overcorrecting and leaning in a little too hard on the "Marilyn was perfectly normal and all the stories of the missed lines and multiple takes was just her way of messing with the studios" angle.

I am at RIVER OF NO RETURN. Apparently they just did the members spring brunch this morning but I haven't been on that level in ages.

I was at least able to redeem my fully punched loyalty card at the concession stand.

Besides the coffee, are there any concessions at Film Forum that are especially good? The baked goods look tempting but they tend to be pricey. (Not that I'm surprised, it's a movie theater after all.)

You're not swayed by Jacques Derrida's rave about the banana bread?

Lol

I usually just get popcorn and/or an espresso.

Tbh I periodically buy the banana bread but I have never actually finished it. It starts to feel very sweet and carby.

Can't go wrong with the popcorn. Sometimes I'll get a cappuccino with it, which they also do well.