Marilyn Monroe Appreciation

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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

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.

The first line of The Seven Year Itch is a lie:

Manhattan Island derives its name from its earliest inhabitants, the Manhattan Indians

Marilyn tried to tell them that, but they ignored her because they were taken in by her 'dumb blonde' persona

@JRatB, sadly I'm out of town or I might have done! I've mostly had bad luck/timing with the spree of MM repertory programs this year, boo.

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

Dipping into the Barbara Leaming bio again. Really good.

But don't just take my word for it. Molly Haskell sez:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/reviews/981122.22haskelt.html

(although I think Molly confuses Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg at one point)

Or read the pull quotes here:
https://hh88kk55ff.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/marilyn-monroe-by-barbara-leaming/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAI5GSSI43s

Just skimmed through this for some reason:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10852408/

Lol Donald Spoto has a lot to say about Marilyn's psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson.

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.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 1, 2026 8:13 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Carole Lombard, however.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 1, 2026 8:14 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry to snub Marilyn in her own thread, but I've been watching Carole Lombard movies lately, and what an astonishing actress she was. Startlingly modern in demeanor. A combination of sex appeal and talent rarely seen in classic Hollywood. Only Rita Hayworth comes to mind as comparable, but she was a little later. I'd seen Lombard's major films before, but she's also amazing in lesser known titles such as Virtue (1932), Hands Across the Table (1935), and in an extended cameo in the shockingly dark antiwar film The Eagle and the Hawk (1933).

It's hard to watch her films and not feel the loss of her premature death. I think she could have, in the long run, been Bette Davis-level among the Hollywood acting elite.

I love Hands Across the Table, In Name Only, and more obscure films that show her intelligence and vivaciousness. I love her.

Orson Welles and ex-husband Willian Powell called her the smartest actress -- camera-smart and booksmart -- they ever knew. Apparently she cursed "like a waitress in a hash house."

Clark Gable was by all accounts devastated for the rest of his life by her death.

None of that surprises me. I think if she could somehow be teleported to our time, she would be a star today.