Marilyn Monroe: Misunderstood Intellectual or Pretentious Poser?

Poser.

"The perfect woman indulges in literature just as she indulges in a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if anybody notices it — and to make sure that somebody does."

Suck it, Nietzsche.

By all accounts, Marilyn Monroe was not a reader. Those photos of her "reading" are just publicity photos.

OP, You just know there was a copy of Vogue inside that book. And she didn't read the articles either.

She didnt want to be considered a "dumb blonde" anymore so in the late 50s she started posing as part of the literati and hired Milton Greene to take artsy fartsy pics of her instead of the cheesecake stuff she always did before.

Add to that, taking up with Arthur Miller, who was mainly attracted to her big soft boobs and Hollywood money. But he bought in to her intellectual act and convinced himself she was "a serious girl" so he wouldn't feel totally ridiculous for marrying her.

Eventually her uneducated and unsophisticated tastes betrayed her, and he realized she was a semiliterate bimbo after all, just like everyone had said.

One photo of her showed her "reading" Ulysses while wearing a bathing suit and seated on a child's teeter-totter in a playground. Eve Arnold took the photo and she said:

"We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was visiting Norman Rosten the poet.... I asked her what she was reading when I went to pick her up (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it -- but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. It was always a collaborative effort of photographer and subject where she was concerned -- but almost more her input."

"Started to read?" Yeah, right! She wanted people to THINK she was reading. Marilyn Monroe always wanted people to think she was more than a dumb blonde, but according to people who knew her reading was not one of her regular activities. She liked talking on the phone and listening to phonograph records and going to parties. And having sex with older men. That was more Marilyn's speed.

She looks like she’s holding that book upside down in OP pic.

I think she read on occasion. There's no way she read James Joyce or William Faulkner. She claimed to want to play "Grushenka" in "The Brothers Karamazov."

Marilyn was a genius! A tragic goddess genius abused by The Hollywood System and misunderstood by fans.

Here's the photo r7 is talking about.

Drunk and high on pills, reading shitty movie scripts with her ass in the air, seems more accurate.

The photographer who took that photo of Marilyn at R12 definitely had a fixation on her ass. There are several other photos from that session that distinctly focus on her very big behind.

James Joyce's face was once described by Patrick White as that of an arch mastubator.

I think she really wanted to improve herself and be more than a stereotypical dumb blonde. How successful she was at that is still a matter of debate.

There is no debate. She was a tortured GENIUS.

both

undereducated as most americans are, but unlike americans today she was ashamed of her deficiency and made an effort to improve herself which included reading great works

I'm sure that hanging around the Strasburgs and that educated New York elite spurred her on...

you think brando ever read books? i doubt he was pressured to do anything but act and look pretty.

I think all people tried to read in the 1950s -- it was an age driven by self-improvement. Monroe was like a lot of Americans aiming to have at least sampled ambitious books.

Someone who worked with her extensively (I can't remember who -- Billy Wilder?) said that Marilyn was very complected about her lack of education. He said she wasn't unintelligent, but almost entirely uneducated, and she tried in her own way to remedy that, or at least to cover it up.

So I'm sure she actually read Joyce and Faulkner, but I doubt she understood much of them. But, as mentioned above, at least she tried -- unlike, say, the current President, who's probably proud that he can't even spell "Faulkner".

But whatever it was, she had it. Truly one in a billion.

I respect people who attempt to improve themselves, especially via reading. MORE people should be doing that. Even if she didn't fully understand the books she was reading, at least she made an effort.

she was proud of her big ass and flaunted having a voluptuous rear

R25, her ass is only big by the standards of 1950s white America.

The latter.

Love the fat girl troll BTW.

Why do fraus love this woman but Gay Men see right through her?

Lots of stupid people turn to books and other activities they heard were "high brow" to try and better themselves.

No, lots of people who are stupid accuse those of reading "high brow" books as being "elitist intellectuals".

Ratchet Dead Whore.

To be fair, no one actually reads Joyce "consecutively". It's not written that way. (Stream of consciousness, all of that). You could pick it up at any point and put it down at any point and you'd be no more clueless about the "plot" as someone who read it faithfully from beginning to end. It's beauty, such as it has, is in the amazing descriptions of Dublin,and in Joyce's ability to get into the minds of such a diversity of character. One of the best parts is the ending, which is the part that Marilyn Monroe is seen reading:

"the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Norman Rosten spoke highly of Marilyn's intellectual efforts.

PS Who knew that so many DL posters took their punctuation clues from James Joyce?

I think she "made an effort" when a camera was around, or someone she wanted to impress. Her housekeeper reported she mainly liked talking on the phone and listening to Frank Sinatra records and didn't have any hobbies or interests.

Did she and Ava Gardner like one another? Speaking of amazing big asses.

Marilyn always struck me as being incredibly "other-directed"; that is, everything she did was for effect. The kind of person who spends their life wondering what other people will think, and who spends their entire life doing or saying and even thinking "Will this impress?" "Will this make them think I'm smart/impressive/talented/sexy?", and so on. Such people hardly have real tastes of their own, and can go through their entire lives without really deciding what kind of, say, books they really like, because everything they read is intended to impress someone else.

That's one of the reasons her ditzy screen persona always seemed so false to me, she wasn't being herself, she was doing her damndest to be the kind of woman that straight men went nuts for. Well, a lot of straight men bought it, but what do straight men know.

I saved this from a previous DL thread on this topic:

“E equals MC squared. Or the letter between D and F.” - MM

I agree, r36. She did seem incredibly shallow. Probably a narcissist as well. If she were alive today she'd be Instagramming herself all day long.

r36, you just described the typical American.

R36 here, and I just wanted to add that for someone who was other-directed and extremely insecure about her lack of education, spending time with a highly-educated asshole like Arthur Miller was a really bad idea.

He must have made her feel desperately insecure and inferior without even trying, and he was capable of trying.

I think she tried to improve herself, hanging out with the New York crowd surely must have influenced her to some degree.

Nah, I just liked white dresses and enemas.

The dumb blonde act was just that, an act she could turn on and off, it wasn't the real her. She had to have had at least average intelligence.

She was definitely intelligent but she didn't read those books, that's just because she wanted to appear intelligent and cultured to the media who had portrayed her as the empty headed bimbo she played in movies.

Robert Mitchum said she wasn't dumb, just "uneducated." The columnist Earl Wilson noted the incongruity of the literary genius Arthur Miller married to a woman who said "antidotes" when she meant "anecdotes" and who once asked a friend while writing a letter "how do you spell "were?" He stated that her friends forgave her for having so little information because she "had so many other things (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)."

I'm a big Olivier fan when he's not being the biggest ham of all time but in The Prince and the Showgirl she wipes him off the screen. I think even one of the older actresses told Olivier that she was stealing the movie from him while they were filming. A very instinctive talent. Which was what Jed Harris said about Olivier. Not bright but great antennae.

"I'm a big Olivier fan when he's not being the biggest ham of all time but in The Prince and the Showgirl she wipes him off the screen."

She always lit up the screen and she knew it. In fact, it was said that she deliberately was late and flubbed her lines in order to eclipse the other actors seh worked with; she would be warming up take after take and they would be wearing down. Olivier so stressed over the making of TPATS that it's no wonder he seems stiff and uncomfortable. Plus he loathed Monroe; it must have been hard for him to pretend to be besotted with her. Tony Curtis was the same way; he had an acute dislike for her due to her chronic lateness and inability to remember her lines. He said kissing her (and she kissed the hell out of him in "Some Like It Hot") was "like kissing Hitler.." To work with Marilyn Monroe was considered hell on earth.

I think she did read. She was part of Lee Strasberg's program and lived with his family for awhile. A number of these books were made into plays or films. She was serious about acting and books like this were part of the preparation, development of a repertoire of materials.

She even managed to finally defeat Cukor who had dealt with and had success with the most difficult and intractable of stars. But she really seems to have lost the will to live at that point.

In the movie My Week With Marilyn, based on a memoir about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl, it might be apocryphal but Olivier is shown telling Monroe to "act your sexy natural self" or words to that effect, undermining Monroe, who was tired of playing "herself" and was trying to create a character.

By the way, that film made it seem as though making the movie was a disaster and Monroe a mess, but watching it today you can see that Monroe just glowed and as others have said, simply blew Olivier off the screen.

[quote]She always lit up the screen and she knew it. In fact, it was said that she deliberately was late and flubbed her lines in order to eclipse the other actors seh worked with; she would be warming up take after take and they would be wearing down.

Interesting. But not very nice. Though I've never doubted she wasn't.

Although those motives have been ascribed to her, I'm not sure it's true.

But I'm sure that the other actors she worked with thought or said she was doing it deliberately, because whenever human beings are frustrated or angry they tend to speculate about the motives of the people who are causing the anger and frustration.

But yeah, it was probably done out of sheer mental illness. If she'd lived, her career would have been over as soon as she had a few flops in a row, and it became clear that she'd cost the studios more money than she brought in. That's the simple equation behind the career of every major actor, and with Marilyn causing so many overruns with her unprofessional behavior, it wouldn't have been long before the studios would have had enough of her.

LOL the photos in OP and r12 though. Trying to look like Sylvia Plath but the bare feet give it away -- recycled hillbilly.

R54, in the late fifties and early sixties, the bare feet were a beatnik thing (which later evolved into a hippie thing).

If you had a book and bare feet around 1960, you were a beatnik or beatnik wannabe, not a hillbilly.

To be fair to her, reading habits are often formed in childhood. She had a terrible childhood and an unstable mother who abandoned her at least once, IIR. An upbringing like that usually does not result in excellence in reading/academics.

Unless you actually WERE a recycled hillbilly, r55, like MM most definitely was.

I think she was extremely bright but had a short attn span. She appreciated talent in others in all areas. SHe had some very accomplished friends outside of entertainment. SHe was very very witty, amusing and she always did her homework prior to an important occasion. For example meeitng people for dinner she planned before hand how the conversaton might go............some of her responses in press interviews over the course of her career were nothing short of profound. Not educated...... but appreciated educated people and could hold her own with just about anybody is how I would sum it up.

One of her close friends gave a toast right before she and Arthur Miller got married He said, may your kids have his looks and her brains. Marilyn was highly amuised, Miller not at all/ I think there was some truth in the comment actually. Marilyn could put Miller in his place when he waxed too poetic about something. He met his match when he married her. There was way way more than a dumb blond in MM and I pity people who count her off as just that.

I wish she'd lived long enough to become a feminist, so we could've seen the real Marilyn. And yes she would have become a feminist, she was a staunch liberal and had only been forced into playing a dumb blonde by the misogynistic culture.

R46, almost the only time he wasn't a ham was in "Carrie," (1952), in which he was great.

R56, that says nothing about her ability to read or liking to read.

Well I like him as well very early on in Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice. And his hamminess I think works really well in Richard lll.

If only his Macbeth film had been made. People who saw him in the role say it was incredible. Most of his reputation comes from his stage work which sadly we'll never know.

"And yes she would have become a feminist."

No, she wouldn't. She was very dependent on men. She wanted a "Daddy." She was no feminist and never would be.

^ I agree. She instinctively knew why she was so popular. Men hate feminists and she wasn't about to alienate her fan base.

This is unfair. She was very lonely and always seeking a lover/soulmate. Who doesn't want one? She was doomed. But many of us are.

Callas was the same. An independent hardworking woman who threw it all away for a man. But this is due to staggering loneliness and often I read on DL people saying if I didn't wake up tomorrow it wouldn't matter. Why because we're not feminists? No because we're lonely and our lives give us no joy and ultimately don't matter.

^Ok but was Monroe a misunderstood intellectual? That's the question. My answer is no, regardless of how she "made an effort" or how fucked up her childhood was. She was not a moron, but she waa not some brainy, philosophical bookworm either like she tried to portray herself in the late 50s.

R58 well said. I've heard late interviews with her, and she was very funny and astute. The mean-spiritedness widely on display in this thread is very saddening.

" I've heard late interviews with her, and she was very funny and astute. "

Her last interview (which can be found on YouTube) is rather disturbing. She started drinking during the interview, and the more she drank the more "angry and defensive" she got over the way she'd been treated in Hollywood. She thought she was never "treated like a star" and went on "like a record stuck in a groove." The interviewer asked her how she "cranked" herself up to do a role and she got unnecessarily angry at him: "I don't crank ANYTHING, I'm not a Model-T!" She drank a whole bottle of champagne during the interview, hardly ate anything and "continued to paint herself as a victim." At the end of the interview her last words were "Please don't make me look like a joke." Then she dissolves into a high-pitched, squeaky giggle. After listening to the interview one gets the impression that this is not a stable woman.

When in her dressing room refusing to come out some poor AD would be sent to her trailer to call for her and I understand she could become very abusive and nasty towards that poor person.

The one movie she behaved on was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, mainly because Jane Russell would just go to her dressing room and get her.

Jane would say something like "Come on, Goldie."

MM asked Arthur Miller to write her a movie. She hoped for something noble, something that would make her more than The Blonde. What did he do? He wrote The Misfits. MM had to play a caricature of herself and say lines based on things Miller took straight from her life. Her character is sexy, crazy, alone, and beset upon by all the men in the film. What MIller did was cruel, and I've always hated him for it. The only true thing about MM's reading I know is that she read poetry. Rilke was a favorite. She picked up the habit before she was a star. She practiced memorizing poetry, so she'd be ready for scripts. MM was a comedienne. All of it was a performance.

This probably won't be well received here but I have never fully understood the fascination with this woman. There were so many glamorous , fascinating and complex stars in the golden age of Hollywood up until about the 1970s.Why does Monroe receive so much obsessive attention. Yes, she led an interesting life but so did so many of her contemporaries who don't seem to capture the public's attention. It seems every few years there is another book, or set of photos, or movie released about her. Why not focus on someone else who lived in that time period? There are so many stories to tell about stars in Hollywood from the 1940s to 70s.

"Why does Monroe receive so much obsessive attention."

I think because straight men like her so much, and straight men have dominated the media all along. A disturbing number of them idolize her.

Straight men don't understand her at all. They think the persona was real somehow, that the innocently sexy and funny woman she pretended to be was the real her. It wasn't, that ditzy sweetly sexy persona was something she invented because she wanted to be a star and that's what straight men wanted to see, and she was ambitious enough to go ahead and give them what they wanted. But it was all a false front, but we can see behind the mask and straight men can't.

If you're saying that gay men don't like her, you're way way off.

R73, if there's anyone that you do find fascinating, who is that?

R74, one can see through the mask and still like her.

She is one film star I have never got at all. To me she is dull and I don't care how sexy she was . Rita Hayworth could dance, and was a competent actress. Even Lana Turner and Ava Gardiner were better actresses, and appeared in far more interesting movies than Monroe. Some Like It Hot is the ONLY movie of hers I like.

[quote]I wish she'd lived long enough to become a feminist, so we could've seen the real Marilyn.

I can't imagine that happening. Had she have lived and done that she would have destroyed her whole mystique. Though maybe if she thought it was the key to relevance in the '70s she would have done it...

I do think we DID see the real Marilyn anyway. I don't think she had much depth.

[quote]This probably won't be well received here but I have never fully understood the fascination with this woman. There were so many glamorous , fascinating and complex stars in the golden age of Hollywood up until about the 1970s.Why does Monroe receive so much obsessive attention. Yes, she led an interesting life but so did so many of her contemporaries who don't seem to capture the public's attention. It seems every few years there is another book, or set of photos, or movie released about her. Why not focus on someone else who lived in that time period? There are so many stories to tell about stars in Hollywood from the 1940s to 70s.

I've never gotten it either.

Curiously, she seems MUCH LESS popular on Datalounge than the world at large. This has to be the longest thread on her in a long time. Yet we get regular threads on Joan and Bette and even the Mitzi Gaynor thread was longer than this one.

And when the odd Monroe thread does come up it seems to feature more women posters than Gay Men.

You're way off, R74.

And Monroe definitely has to have one of the highest rates of straight to gay fans of any classic film actress.

[quote]She is one film star I have never got at all. To me she is dull and I don't care how sexy she was . Rita Hayworth could dance, and was a competent actress. Even Lana Turner and Ava Gardiner were better actresses, and appeared in far more interesting movies than Monroe. Some Like It Hot is the ONLY movie of hers I like.

These are my thoughts generally. Even though being gay I think I kind of got, or at least understood, Lana Turner's sex appeal. Not so with Marilyn.

I admire Kate Hepburn, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard even Rita Hayworth all more than Monroe. She is an image. Dare I say a counter feminist one. She is the epitome of a used and neurotic female a victim. Not in the same league as most of the previous actresses I mentioned who had more talent than her. I also don't buy her as some intellect either. Watch the interview with Olivier talking about her. She was a bimbo.

"I wish she'd lived long enough to become a feminist, so we could've seen the real Marilyn."

Oh, I think that if Marilyn had lived until the seventies, she'd have paid lip service to feminism, and shared some horror stories about her days as a struggling young hottie. And she'd have kept right on trying to find a man who'd make it all better.

Maybe if she'd lived to a ripe old age, she'd finally have realized that no man was ever going to solve all her problems, and that she needed to look inside herself and not at other people, if she ever wanted peace and happiness. But she didn't live to a ripe old age, did she.

It's so easy to blame all her problems on men. They preyed on her etc. But I'm sorry how much of her problems were inflicted on her and how much was of her own poor choices and playing the game she knew. Davis, Hepburn and Stanwyck made great careers for themselves without resorting to being objects. Actresses who know they're hot play on it. Ok ddony think she would have stretched herself as an actress. Had she lived I reckon she would have faded into the background by 40.

Though also a strange cult of apologism for her behaviour (by that I mean her rudeness to colleagues). 'She berated the little set-hand sent to knock on her door because she was preyed on by men or something,' seems to be the usual type of line.

There's some crackpot who periodically posts that MM faked her death, with help, and now is a potter in Saskatchewan.

Sounds farfetched. No way she would ever willingly walk away from the limelight.

Gay men tend to have better taste.

Katherine Hepburn is by far my favourite actress and female star if that period. Compared to Davis Crawford and Stanwyck, I find her performances stand up the best. She was mannered at times but always feels contemporary. In The Philadelphia Story , Adams Rib, Summertime, even that thriller she made " undercurrent " she is very good.

Oh, I don't like either K Hepburn or Monroe -- they're both my least favorite classic film actresses. It's not a coincidence women tend to like both.

R90. It's not a male or female thing.

No... women absolutely like Monroe more than gay men.

This website proves that.

Gay men on here hate Hepburn because she was upper class. Davis and Crawford were not pleasant but they were camp.

[quote]Gay men on here hate Hepburn because she was upper class.

Really?

[quote]Davis and Crawford were not pleasant

True. But their fans accept it. Monroe's fans oddly beatify her.

R94. Definitely. Hepburn was no less talented than Crawford or Stanwyck yet the vitriol she gets on here is always about being a lesbian...or upper class....or too manly. Ridiculous. She's the best. Go on then tell me I'm wrong. She gets ridiculous criticism on here all the time. People say she was "mannered" so was Davis...more so. So why the hate for Kate?

Well, there's a difference between being upper class and a lesbian. You seem to conflate the two. While she may not be popular with everyone because of her lack of femininity -- and the sexuality and personality of Old Hollywood goddesses is a inextricably big part of their appeal (and certainly with none more than Monroe) -- that this website would dislike her for being upper class I don't believe. There aren't plenty of threads devoted to 'not getting' Sigourney Weaver.

Oh come on we all know she gets blasted on here every time her name is mentioned. What's the real reason?

Are you referring to Monroe, R97?

There is a documentary of Some Like It Hot somewhere on youtube and Billy Wilder described the pain in the ass she was - dozens of takes and Curtis and Lemmon had to be perfect in each take because they would print when she finally got it right.

Some people said she did it on purpose, others said she was just incredibly insecure. And yes Curtis did say 'Kissing her was like kissing Hitler', but he agreed it was stupid because they were friends and also had an affair.

Anyway at the end of the documentary Wilder said if he got a chance to work with her again he absolutely would because she was worth it.

BTW, Jack Lemmon's role initially was being played by Frank Sinatra and MM's by Mitzi Gaynor. The producers eventually took a gamble with Lemmon because he was an unknown at the time and when MM agreed to do it they thought they had enough star power to sell tickets.

I'd have preferred it with Mitzi Gaynor.

Also Wilder said Lemmon took to playing in drag quite easily and they even didn't have to dub him. Curtis was very self-conscious about it and it's not his (female) voice in the movie.

Lemmon and MM really stole the movie from Curtis who just came from playing Falco in Sweet Smell of Success the previous year (where he was brilliant)

I do think she was a talented actress and a great comedienne but what was the most amazing thing about MM was her screen presence which came natural to her, it wasn't forced. Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck were like that too.

R101. Please tell me why you think she was great at comedy. I'm being serious. All I see is a grown woman talking like a baby and acting dumb. Judy Holiday did it more entertainingly.

I guess what it boils down to is that she was sexy and bankable. Her fans try to add another layer to her but that's pretty much her appeal.

I don't think she was a natural actress at all. Look at her terrible performance in Niagra, or in The Misfits

Her speaking always sounded so clunky. The over-enunciation, the too high voice, the babyness. It sounded so affected. (Hepburn's did too, but that was, presumably, natural) It's hard to imagine her playing something like Martha in WAOVW? that Taylor, a contemporary and six years her junior, did in '66.

I prefer MM in her performances before full fledged stardom hit--All About Eve, Asphalt Jungle, Clash By Night, Monkey Business, and Don't Bother to Knock. Some good performances there and all fine if not outstanding movies.

Olivier was a jealous SOB and probably resented enormously that in a film he directed Monroe was the ONLY reason for watching it.

Niagara is a terrific film. Saw it once in theater in a gorgeous technicolor print. One of those technicolor noirs. And Gentlemen Prefers Blondes and Bus Stop...What is wrong with you idiots?

There should be just one movie star today as incandescent. Instead they are only royally fucked up drugged up messes.

^ To be fair, Marilyn was a royally fucked up drugged up mess, herself.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is fun. But Jane Russell outshines Marilyn.

She was very thoughtful but not formally educated. Very depressed. The melancholy couple with her beauty lent to men projecting ideals and savior fantasies onto her. But she was much smarter and in her own time, more elegant than people gave her credit for.

R110 [coupled]. I've said on here before that my Grandfather knew Miller and would meet up with Miller and Monroe when they were married.

Low key, refined and sophisticated knowledge about things like fragrance. More resembled a typical "country house" woman during her Connecticut years.

Very depressed about not being able to have children.

R113 And my Grandfather never got too much into that because it thought it was too personal for them. I probably shouldn't even be mentioning it on here because it was probably meant in confidence and my Grandfather was never the type to talk. He felt genuinely sad for them and somehow it came up one time in a conversation. He used to sort of ramble about things while he was showing me his models in his study, it was therapeutic for him.

R114 "...[he]thought..."

R108 that was my point. I should have stressed the 'only.'

R73 and R73, the reasons she still receives attention is simple. She died tragically, so this causes her to be overappreciated (i.e. Kurt Cobain). Men love her because she wasn't the type to put up a fight, she just wanted to please her man (straight men LOVE that). And pathetic women love her and try so hard to imitate her because they are dumb. I think just about every female I've met who loves Marilyn Monroe has a screw loose. They find her dumb-blonde act endearing. The devotion from straight women to Marilyn Monroe reminds me of all the dumb women who moved to NYC to be just like Carrie Bradshaw.

R117 doesn't get it. MM is incandescent onscreen. If she weren't, it wouldn't matter how she died--there would no longer be interest.

Marilyn's appeal to people is not an actress but as an image. That's why every other star in the history of Hollywood pales next to her for icon status, even Liz Taylor.

The op is an ignorant snobbish fool. Just because you don't like to read does not mean that she didn't like to read.

I think it's both. She's a terrific light comedienne which for some strange reason is undervalued. Honestly people win Oscars for much less demanding less interesting work.

The whole let's dirty up the face of a pretty actress and put her in homeless clothes and give her an Academy Award for it routine.

R118, I know that she was on screen, but really, the adoration she gets from dumb fraus and straight men is ridiculous. If she hadn't died early, she WOULD NOT have been remembered as fondly. How could someone THAT unstable be remembered fondly unless they died early?

R68 the 2 choices were misunderstood intellectual or pretentious poser. She was NOT the latter.

She may have had borderline personality disorder.

R99, I'm not so sure that Jack Lemmon was an unknown when he was cast in Some Like it Hot, since he had already starred in several motion pictures, including It Shoukd Hapoen to You, My Sister Eileen and Bell Book and Candle, and had won an Oscar for Mister Roberts...

Question: When was the last time there was a thread on her this long?

Oh, and by the way you'd never be allowed to post this thread on a frau website. Like Diana, Princess of Wales, Chrissy Metz, or any given missing or murdered white woman they demand unanimous praise.

I just discovered a recording she made of "You'd Be Surprised." It's delightful.

Lemmon was a known star at that point. Mister Roberts was huge.

Marilyn went to a "literary luncheon" that included her husband Arthur Miller, Carson McCullers and Isak Dinesen. It was held at Carson McCuller's house. When asked about the luncheon (most people expected Miller would have some delicious stories to tell about a meeting that included those three women) he barely remembered it. He said he was pretty sure Marilyn had never read anything by McCullers, although she may have seen the theater version of "The Member of the Wedding." Although he doesn't say as much, it's a safe bet Marilyn never read anything by Dinesen, either. The menu included oysters, white grapes, champagne and a souffle. Ugh. The menu seemingly catered to Dinesen, who said she ate and drank not much more than oysters and grapes and champagne because "I'm an old woman and I eat what agrees with me." Anyway, the forgettable luncheon (at least in Arthur Miller's view) was written up as a splendid occasion and the three women supposedly had such a good time with each other that when McCullers put on a record she and Marilyn and Dinesen started to dance on top of a marble table. I think it was McCullers who spread that implausible tale. Anyway, Arthur Miller said no such thing happened; he said McCullers "seemed very ill, she was almost an invalid, her muscles shriveled. She did not start dancing on the table. She wouldn't have been capable of it." Carson McCullers loved to embellish the truth.

I've seen photos from the luncheon. In two of them McCullers can be seen KISSING Marilyn, although mercifully not on the mouth, at least not in those pictures (McCullers was VERY unattractive). Marilyn, for her part seemed to be giggling and was probably anesthetized by champagne. It's still pretty gross, because McCullers was famous for having violent "crushes" on women and frequently made unwanted passes at them. It's unknown what Marilyn's thoughts on the luncheon were. I tend to think it didn't make much of an impression on her, either.

She wasn't well-read, or well-educated, or intellectually inclined..

And yet by today's standards, she'd be a genius.

There aren't many people that the camera loved as much as it did her, both in still photographs and on the silver screen. We are lucky to have such an extensive record of her luminous beauty and somewhat ethereal persona and that may be her lasting legacy.

[quote]Curtis was very self-conscious about it and it's not his (female) voice in the movie.

Paul Frees, the host of Disney's Haunted Mansion dubbed for Curtis.

[quote]Compared to Davis Crawford and Stanwyck

Lol, who the fuck is Davis Crawford?

The same type of people who idolize Monroe also seem to love Princess Diana. I think they both would have been miserable people to be around.

Both were unhappy beauties that seemed to need a little tender loving care.

R135 but they both received plenty of tlc, perhaps too much and they still went Batshit and turned on people regardless. I really suspect a firmer hand might have straightened them out. I suspect many borderlines are just spoiled more than anything.

[quote]I'm not so sure that Jack Lemmon was an unknown when he was cast in Some Like it HotHot

Maybe not unknown, but he didn't really have star power. In any case I am glad they cast Lemmon because Frank Sinatra would have been awful as Geraldine.

R136, right you are! Spare the rod and spoil the child!

Marilyn didn't grow up spoiled, but became spoiled. By the end of her career her people were telling her "Sure, keep the director and crew and other actors waiting for a few more hours because you feel insecure. It's your feelings that matter, not how much you cost the studio!".

Which would have killed her career quickly enough after another flop or two, no studio will hire an actor who single-handedly doubles a film's budget unless they're very, very certain that they're a box-office draw.

I'm glad she got out and is a potter in Saskatchewan.

Let me add a comment here..........there has been no other star on the face of the planet that has ever come close on the value of even a scrap of paper that was part of their estate. Some routine paperwork regarding the title of her 1955 ford thunderbird she had sold that she kept filed away not too long ago brought $14000 at auction on the open market....................Im sorry but people will pay enormous sums for trivial nothing she owned. THere is no other star or famous personality in history that can match her in this regard. DIsmiss her anyway you want but history has shown thru the auction block who was the ultimate historic figure.

Marilyn was already ahead of her time and was much more of a 60 s type person in the 1950 s. She already had feminist ideas in the 50s. SHe felt pushed around and abused (and by fox she certainly was) and she was always notoriously underpaid and disrespected by them. SHe called in sick and took forever to come out of her dressing room to get even with them partly for the shitty treatment.

Ill add, Monroe blew Lawrence Olivia off the screen in the prince and the the showgirl. He was awful in the movie. She pretty much blew everybody off the screen starting with Niagra. Also somebody knocked her final life magazine interview. It was deemed brillant at the time. Also Richard Merryman the author of the article was biased from the get go. He mainly worked for religious publications and resented having to do the interview in the first place. As the biggest star in the world MM demanded his questions first, before the interview, which he agreed to. He obviously resented it. What you see is a lot of hostility towards Marilyn for the power she attained. by people she worked for and worked behind the scenes, especially men . Given that..... why the hell wouldnt she have become a feminist?

The studio was screwing her and she would screw them.

"Also somebody knocked her final life magazine interview. It was deemed brillant at the time."

I doubt it was deemed "brillant." Listening to it, it's obvious that something is very wrong with her. At one point she says "I want to be an artist...an actress...with integrity." This from a woman who drove her directors and co-stars crazy with her lateness and inability to know her lines. The interview really did show how troubled she was and how much she saw herself as a victim.

"Why the hell wouldnt she have become a feminist?"

All her life her self worth was based on her sexual attractiveness and outer appearance. All her life she sought protection and safety by being in a relationship with a man. Her neediness was a bottomless pit. Arthur Miller said of her "she's devouring me." She always presented to people the image of being a waif, an orphan, a lost little girl. And she's going to be "a feminist?" Never would have happened.

I think straight women idolize Marilyn Monroe more than men (both straight and gay) do.

Here she is singing Happy Birthday Mr. President.

[quote]why the hell wouldnt she have become a feminist?

I think she might've.

Like most feminists she only cared about her own advancement.

R145, Are you a straight woman?

I find it interesting Betty Grable allowed her first billing in HTMAM. I can’t imagine MM doing that to an upcoming starlet in 1963.

""Why the hell wouldnt she have become a feminist?"

"All her life her self worth was based on her sexual attractiveness and outer appearance. All her life she sought protection and safety by being in a relationship with a man. Her neediness was a bottomless pit. ""

The thing about people who are bottomless pits of neediness is that they're always trying new ways to deal with the pain and emptiness. Marilyn tried man after man, she tried becoming world famous, she tried therapy, she tried becoming a serious actress and producer, she tried pills and alcohol... of course none of it worked. None of it made her happy or feel at peace.

So if she'd lived, she'd have gone on trying everything to fix herself. Since the sixties were coming on, she'd probably have tried hallucinogens, hippie-ism, possibly a cult or two, and definitely feminism when it became popular. The thing is, while she played up the little-girl-lost thing in movies and with men, she was also hugely ambitious and was a serious careerist, fought openly with studio heads, and formed her own production company and hired Lord Olivier to work for *her*. So while obviously she wasn't a gold star feminist or anything while she lived, she actually lived out a lot of feminist ideology.

I've seen some of her pottery. It's very beautiful and reminds me of the few ceramics that Gauguin made. Maybe because both artists were living in self-imposed exile and the work reflected their being "strangers in a strange land."

The one time I met her (about 6 years ago, but I can't say where), I was struck by the eloquence of her hands. Years of shaping clay had formed them into formidable instruments of creation. She looked magnificent. Time had sculpted her into a true Scandinavian, so that, uncannily, her resemblance to Garbo was striking. She was warm but not talkative and when she did speak, there was no trace of the old breathy baby voice. If you've heard the last interviews she did, you'll remember the bell-like clarity of her voice and that sound had been distilled into a purity that

Wtf?

Must be the wacko who says MM faked her death and moved to Saskatchewan.

regarding keepjing her directors and costars waiting..........she answered that one in the article............was she making a movie or punching a time clock? The result s of her performacnces were on the screen and she was #1 at the boxoffice for almost a decade. There are a surprising # of people that seem to place punctuality and subservience to a corporation ( 2oth ) above all else. Marilyn had only one goal.....................makng sure that the movie goer got their moneys worth out of her performance. She never let that goal slip.

"Was she making a movie or punching a time clock? "

Do you know anything about movie making? Time is of the utmost importance. Monroe's movies would go way over budget due to the delays caused by her lateness and inability to remember lines, not to mention how torturous it was for the cast and crew and director. Billy Wilder said this about working with her in "Some Like It Hot":

""She was never on time once. It is a terrible thing for an acting company, the director, the cameraman. You sit there and wait. You can't start without her. Thousands of dollars you see going into the hole. You can always figure a Monroe picture runs an extra few hundred thousand because she's coming late. It demoralizes the whole company. It's like trench warfare. You sit and sit, waiting for something to happen. When are the shells going to explode?"

Watch all the takes she does with Charisse in her final movie and Cyd(who could be a royal bitch) never loses her cool. The tedium must have been exhausting. Dean Martin lost it and Charisse was very surprised as he had been the soul of patience.

Cukor knew what he was in for having gone through the hell of the Garland Star is Born and even he finally said enough. She had clearly gone over the edge by that point and wasn't coming back. After being with the Kennedys it was a done deal. She was finished.

"Was she making a movie or punching a time clock? "

She wasn't a painter or writer, working at home, on her own time. She was an actor, a hired player, making films in collaboration with hundreds of other people, who were paid because a movie studio had put up the money to make the film. When Marilyn didn't show up and do her part, nobody else on the set could do theirs, which resulted in hundreds of people being paid to do nothing and huge cost overruns on each and every one of their films. It was a form of unprofessionalism that would have destroyed Marilyn's career soon enough, once the studios were convinced that she was too old to be a star or she wasn't a box-office draw, she would have found herself unemployed.

Not to mention, who else on the movie could do their best work when they'd devoted their day to getting angrier and angrier at the one person who was holding things up. Imagine being a director on one of her films, listening to your other cast and crew complain all day long that the Marilyn-associated delays on this film were going to cost them their next job, and being hauled into the production offices to be reamed out about cost overruns, feeling your strength and patience and career ebb away... and then Marilyn came out of her trailer half-sozzled and unable to remember her lines, and you know that if you so much as give her an unkind look you wont see that bitch for DAYS and everything will be that much worse.

Really, some people wonder why Marilyn didn't make many good films or wasn't paired with strong co-stars, my theory is that she drained the energy out of everyone else involved, and her unprofessionalism meant that everyone else on the film was going to do a shitty job - including the director.

R156 I agree . On that note, I always hear people excuse Marilyn's unprofessional behavior by saying that she was abused and mistreated. But the unfortunate fact was that a huge chunk of these pretty young women drawn to stardom came from troubled, abusive, and tumoltous backgrounds. Monroe was far from the only starlet with a rough upbringing or life. Nowadays, many of the major Hollywood stars tend to come from solidly middle class, relatively stable upbringings and many have pre existing family connections to Hollywood. But back then, many of these individuals led rougher lives. I don't think her story is as unique as many people think.

Yeah, R157, Barbara Stanwyck came from a rotten background and she still managed to show up on time!

A gentle reminder that there is not a comparative version of "unique" such as "more unique." Something is unique or it isn't. "More unusual" is an alternative.

Stanwyck would have been a hoot as Sugar Kane...

Miller called her one of the truly unconventional people he'd ever known, but the intellectual stuff is pure poseur left over from the Hollywood studio days of the 1930s. Go back and you'll read how much Jean Harlow adored reading, she was quite bookish, really. We're assured the leading men who had their parents in their homes kept a bachelor pad in Hwood to entertain many many many ladies, etc. etc. It's just basic PR.

The heart of gold myth is dubious too.

Although it's been disputed, i thought the memoir by her maid Lena Pepitone has the ring if truth to it

At least she never stacked her library on tables or the floor in other places.

No need to. She was already stacked.

As Jean Peters says in "Niagara," "Listen, for a figure like that, you have to start laying the foundations when you're 12."

[quote] "Was she making a movie or punching a time clock? "

You obviously know nothing about how films are made.

Joan Crawford had a miserable childhood and even Davis gave her credit for being a professional.

I don't really know the behind the scenes truth, but it seems as though Crawford was very determined and worked like a dog, while Monroe seems to just have stardom happen for her, probably because the camera simply adored her...

[quote]Monroe seems to just have stardom happen for her

R167, you're right.

I wonder if that's why MM doesn't seem to really resonate with gay men. What's her struggle? We never really had much love for her or Hepburn (A or K) and maybe some others too (like Ingrid Bergman). But we love Garland, Stanwyck, and Davis.

Oh, and of course...

"...the camera simply adored her."

What was I? Chopped liver?

She was radiant on screen!

And there you have it. The rest is babble.

I never thought so. I found her awkward and self-conscious.

"I wonder if that's why MM doesn't seem to really resonate with gay men. What's her struggle?"

WTF are you talking about? Marilyn clawed and fucked her way to the top bit by bit, just like Joan Crawford had before her. But she did her best to hide her ambition and drive behind that little-girl-lost act, while Crawford totally fucking owned it! And that's why I don't love Marilyn, her ditzy-blonde persona was completely false, it was something concocted to fool clueless straight men into giving what she wanted.

"Monroe seems to just have stardom happen for her"

Wrong, Marilyn worked her ass off to become a star. What just happened for her is all the dick in the world. She actually had more than she wanted, which is something gay men don't really identify with.

MM complained JFK never bothered about foreplay when he got together with her.

"MM complained JFK never bothered about foreplay when he got together with her."

Well, it's not like they were in a relationship or anything. They had maybe a couple of one night stands, and that was it. Anyway, none of the Kennedys were into such niceties as foreplay. They were all "shove it in, pump, squirt, pull it out" types.

You’re not wrong, R174.

Maybe it was actually the ditzy persona that gay men didnt get. We prefer La Crawford’s owning it.

Yes, r174, but Joan dropped the facade from time to time, so we'd get a good look at the real person. And other people reported on it as well.

When did Marilyn ever exhibit her "real" persona, revealing her "clawing and fucking" and dropping the "little girl lost" act?

I can't think of any examples, or of any anecdotes from the myriad of biographies about her...

Babble babble babble blah blah blah

Pretentious Poser

She couldn't spell the word "C-A-T" unless somebody spotted her the "C" and "T."

And someone can't spell "poseur."

Monroe has always left me cold and I can't quite explain why. I just feel meh about her.

r145

drunk and/or high.

"Monroe has always left me cold and I can't quite explain why. I just feel meh about her."

She's not for everyone. I always considered her a very limited actress. Her greatest gift was that she photographed very well. And of course she exuded sexuality. Billy Wilder said she had "flesh impact", that is, her screen image seemed like real flesh, not film. Clara Bow was like that, too.

"Yes, [R174], but Joan dropped the facade from time to time, so we'd get a good look at the real person. And other people reported on it as well. "

Crawford was quite open about her ambition in her publicity, and played ambitious or professional women more and more as she got older, and I don't think Monroe ever did either. And Crawford did let her inner psychobitch out onto the screen in her later years, in camp classics like "Queen Bee" and "Torch Song", not that her incredible pretentiousness didn't have almost as much camp appeal as her bitchiness.

"When did Marilyn ever exhibit her "real" persona, revealing her "clawing and fucking" and dropping the "little girl lost" act? "

I don't think she ever let the ambitious, driven, careerist side of her personality show on film. Of course the vulnerability that she showed on screen was also a genuine part of her personality, almost everyone she met described her as sweet and vulnerable. Well, everyone who met her when she was "on" anyway, or in a good mood. The people who were around when she was drinking and popping pills or refusing to come out of her dressing room for hours or days probably thought differently.

I made stabs at Ulysses for over a year when I was young. Like Marilyn, I would read out loud bits of it. I did this with Gertrude Stein and Hemingway as well. Hemingway of course wasn't at all difficult.

Monroe was just smart enough to fail to read Ulysses in the same way most of have failed and she was honest about it.

R182 anyone of that era that you like?

I'm not R182 but I like lots from that era. But, I suppose, at the forefront is the trinity: Davis, Stanwyck, Crawford.

Now MARY! me all you want.

Who thinks she was murdered?

Not me.

And not really anyone *seriously* really.

Interestingly, if believe in a JFK conspiracy, I've heard it said that certain elements tried to promote the idea that JFK murdered Monroe in order to make people feel less sorry for his death.

If she had publicly claimed to have had an affair with the President in 1962 almost everyone would have sided with him not her. She'd have found FOX denouncing her and perhaps suggesting committal.

"Who thinks she was murdered? "

Oh for fuck's sake, she spent the last 5-10 years of her life combining alcohol and serious pills. People who do that tend to, you know, die in their sleep at some random point.

"Who thinks she was murdered? "

There is nothing unusual about washing bedsheets at 3 o' clock in the morning.

- Eunice Murray

Donald Spoto, a big ol' Marilyn queen, said she was done in by a killer enema. The last night of her life she had taken a quantity of pills but still could not sleep. Her evil, possessive (at least according to Spoto) psychiatrist Ralph Greenson. prescribed for her a chloral hydrate enema, to be administered by the witchy housekeeper Mrs. Murray, who Greenson had enlisted to keep a close watch on Marilyn. Unaware of how many pills she'd already taken, Greenson's enema caused her to overdose on sedatives. The enema was expelled onto the sheets, hence Mrs. Murray doing laundry in the wee hours of the morning. That's one theory of how she died. There are many others. But I don't believe for a minute she was murdered. She finally took too much of something and died. It was essentially the same way Judy Garland went. All those years of addiction finally caught up with them both.

True.

[quote]There is nothing unusual about washing bedsheets at 3 o' clock in the morning.

With water shut off in the master bath and no washer in the house, where was Eunice doing laundry...the kitchen sink?

[quote] And someone can't spell "poseur."

The English spelling of "poser" is not exactly incorrect.

There is something more precise and condescending in the use of “poseur,” which I think better delivers its intended meaning

I always thought Marilyn would have been happpier as a teacher or a nurse. hollywood was a horrible place for someone as insecure as her. She was of average intelligence given her upbringing. Had she had a better childhood, she may have had a chance.

I feel the same way about Britney Spears. She would have been better off being a normal girl who could have grown into a normal career woman. Fame, especially at a young age, ruins lives...

[quote]She was of average intelligence given her upbringing.

Upbringing and education have nothing to do with intelligence.

"I always thought Marilyn would have been happpier as a teacher or a nurse. hollywood was a horrible place for someone as insecure as her."

Don't be silly, she would have been even more miserable as a teacher or a nurse. She really was "a bottomless pit of need", as someone said upthread, and she spent her life trying to satisfy that need with fame, with men, with alcohol and pills, with friends and teachers, with therapy, with the hope of being taken seriously... none of it worked, but I give her credit for giving everything a try. The neediness was the result of her horrible childhood and was a lifelong part of her personality, and if she'd been a regular schmoe with a regular job or regular husband, she'd have been miserable and would have tried to escape and become a star, or at least find a new career or a new husband, in the hopes that the next thing would make her happy. Remember she actually was married to a regular guy, her first husband, she was absolutely miserable and left to become an actress and model.

Honestly, anyone who believes her "I'm such a poor little waif" doesn't understand the first thing about her. She was hugely ambitious.

Stardom definitely didn't just happen for Monroe, she fucked everybody as well as having a chin implant, nose job, and a "become Marilyn" make-up routine that seems exhausting. You can see her camera appeal without any of the transformation stuff, but the fact is once she was on the road to be a star they basically gave her plastic surgery with make-up, most particularly with her mouth. All of what she went through has to have taken its toll.

Yes, Norma Jean "created' Marilyn though plastic surgery and makeup. It would take two hours (or more) to prepare her an appearance. Two or more hours to change her into Marilyn Monroe.

How did she get such pointy tits in some of her pics?

Eunice Murray should have been arrested for tampering with evidence. She spied on MM and I believe she had just got fired.

R204, you've never heard of the "bullet bras" of the mid 20th century?

The trauma of her childhood and personal emotional make up doomed her from the beginning. She was never going to be happy. Especially that soon she was going to be pushing 40.

r207 Exactly. It doesn't matter how many alternative lives she could have lived outside of fame... she was doomed because of her genetic makeup not being able to overcome her childhood experiences.

We do occasionally hear that before she died she was just about to start doing Shakespeare in Bath or something along those lines.

Gurl, it would've been those stupid sex comedies for a few years more then Hollywood Squares.

R208 also, her mother and both her mother's parents were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and ended their days in an asylum. Her uncle (mother's brother) was also mentally disturbed and went missing when Norma Jeane was 3. He was declared dead several years later.

I think the theory that she was about to publicly reveal that she'd been banging the Kennedy brothers is garbage. It just wasn't her M.O. From everything I've read about her, she liked the intrigue and drama of it but she was never the spiteful or "crazy ex-girlfriend" type. I really think she was polyamorous before there was such a term. Even during her marriages, she kept a separate apartment where she'd meet with a variety of lovers. She seemed to be the type who could never be content with just one person. At the same time, she had this idea that she wanted to be a wife and have kids (I think she genuinely did love children) but she just wasn't cut out for it. I think she had a real duality to her nature and after having read several bios of her, I buy into the idea that she also had a few women as lovers. She was a big ol' mass of contradictions. I agree with the poster who described her as doomed from the start. I don't think she was capable of being happy, poor thing.

On the other hand, I think she also truly did crave to better herself and although I doubt she was any sort of serious intellectual, I don't think she was dumb. Many who knew her said she was bright and very good at puns & wordplay.

I believe her death was most likely an accidental overdose.

She's a potter in Saskatchewan.

>>Many who knew her said she was bright and very good at puns & wordplay.

We wish we got to see her on Password

"...good at puns and wordplay..."

That absolutely comes across in some of her interviews. A delight in words that is almost childlike. It reminds me of that scene in The Misfits where she has devised a step out of a brick and goes in and out of the house delightedly. I wonder if that kind of playfulness was part of what attracted Miller to her.

[quote]they basically gave her plastic surgery with make-up, most particularly with her mouth

Monroe herself came up with the shading and highlighting techniques using several colors of lipstick to achieve their "lusciousness."

....

I think she was a damaged creature with low self esteem who thought the habits on an intellectual would compensate for her failings. I have no doubt she tried sincerely but think it was a solution to a problem for her, not a genuine vocation. I don’t know how intelligent she was.

R168. You don't speak for all of us. I love Kate Hepburn ( not fussed about Audrey) but loathe Bette Davis' acting. So sue me, I don't fit your gay man stereotype.

I guess you don't fit the stereotype, R128. And you also lack taste.

R219. That is a matter of opinion. I know every queen on here thinks Davis is the be all and end all of actresses but I don't. Sorry, I don't mind being alone in that opinion.

It's not just every 'queen on here' that thinks that: Davis is, of course, the most celebrated classic screen actress even in the real world.

I'm sorry but Davis started out an interesting actress but by the late 1940s had descended into self parody and camp mannerisms. I don't think the world still finds her acting great. There have been many more skilful and talented actresses than Davis.

I just wish she'd read the instructions on the pill bottle.

[quote]I don't think the world still finds her acting great.

Better than K Hepburn's at least.

[quote]I just wish she'd read the instructions on the pill bottle.

I do serious literature only.

I'm not sure. Hepburn was limited, but at least she didn't chew the scenery in all her movies.. and she was better in comedy. She also developed and grew in a way Davis never did. Ok Davis changed her appearance, but she never changed her excesses. She was usually over the top and actually samey in most parts. I especially hate it when she affects an upper class accent with all those pauses between words.

Not true, R226. But Davis remains held in higher regard than Hepburn today no matter what you think.

For what it's worth, AFI has Kate Hepburn at #1 and Bette Davis at #2 on their list of Greatest Hollywood legends.

Yes, in 1999. It's 2019.

Davis has dated so badly in her performances. She has maybe three or four that hold up.

The fact is that Davis was artificial in her acting style. She's fun to watch but she was a lazy one note actress. Even Alex Guiness was disappointed when he worked with her on The scapegoat. He said she wasn't the artist he'd anticipated, and that she just spat out her lines in the familiar way, without understanding the character she was playing. She was all surface.

Ooh.

K Hepburn's worse though.

Monroe is an icon.

Monroe was an overrated one trick whore. Never mind all this "oh she was sooo intelligent" or "ohh she was a stifled genius" crap, the woman pimped herself out to money men to get ahead. Plus she couldn't act for toffee, icon or not.

R234 No, you're just slut shaming her! You would never criticize a man who sucked dick for a career. She was a brilliant feminist icon who weaponized her femininity to achieve success. If you can't handle Marilyn at her worst then you don't deserve her at her best!

[quote] the woman pimped herself out to money men to get ahead.

Something wrong with STRIPPIN'?!

She was the very definition of a poseur. She had no real interest in literature or anything else they teach at college, she was just trying to convince people she wasn't the dumbass she played in her early films, and to make up for having very little education.

Which is kind of sad, being a good actress and having had the guts to claw her way from the bottom of the film industry to the top doesn't seem to have made her proud of herself, instead she had to put all this effort into trying to be more like Arthur Miller. As if that were a worthwhile goal on any level...

It is remarkable how much life MM packed into an all too short time. She had 3 husbands, 2 famous ones, Hollywood stardom and remarkable number of photo shoots before and during film career. Her home in Los Angeles was a beautiful spanish hacienda little changed to this day. MM even went to Mexico to get authentic pottery for outdoor plants. No one person was captured her level of Fame.

It's also remarkable that she was only a major star for less than a decade before her death. Granted, she'd already had significant bit roles in ASPHALT JUNGLE and ALL ABOUT EVE and her first starring role in DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK, but she didn't really become a household name until 1953 with the releases of back-to-back hits NIAGARA, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. Also the first Playboy issue with her on the cover/centerforld debuting in December '53. Then nine years later, she was dead.

I preferred Jane Russell in GPB.

R235. People like you piss me off. She was no feminist. Kate Hepburn and Lauren Bacall were feminists. And by the way the double standard shit doesn't work because I DO call out men for the same thing. If you're a man or woman trading sex for work you are part of the problem. Don't cry victim, because there are genuine victims out there who don't get to choose. Asshole!

[quote]Kate Hepburn and Lauren Bacall were feminists.

I don't know if they were.

Not when you had Hepburn's financial background and read about her relationship with Tracy.

Maybe Davis and Stanwyck would be better examples.

R242. Nope. Davis herself said she wasn't women's lib in a Dick Cavett interview. She said some crap about "only a man can truly liberate a woman"

R242 is another anti Hepburn troll. Keep reaching dear.

Yes, Davis wouldn't have described herself as a feminist but she lived her life with more bravery than Hepburn.

I do remember Hepburn expressing some anti feminist party line views in her book, I think, (though I'm sure she mostly toed it knowing her legacy lay on it). I'll have to search them out.

[quote][R242] is another anti Hepburn troll. Keep reaching dear.

Troll = anyone who says anything I don't like.

And isn't having multiple people -- 'another troll' -- expressing the same opinion the opposite of trolling?

Davis was not a feminist, just an ambitious actress like Hepburn. Also Davis was just as concerned with legacy and far nastier and bitter offscreen than Hepburn. But im sure you will all disagree since you love her so much.

[quote] Davis was not a feminist, just an ambitious actress like Hepburn.

Yes, neither were really feminists -- beyond the extent to which it could benefit them -- just ambitious. Like most feminists.

[quote]Also Davis was just as concerned with legacy

Less so, I suspect, because Davis have such robust confidence in her own abilities and had so long held the title. Hepburn, in contrast, only began to be considered a competitor retroactively and in a kind of postmodern way which is more susceptible to trends. She was no fool and was acutely aware of that. Her fierceness is guarding her respectability came from the same place. But, in more intimate motions, even she revealed that she never thought she was as good respectively as Bette thought Bette was.

[quote]far nastier and bitter offscreen than Hepburn.

Quite the opposite actually. But like all the dwindling few who like Hepburn who actually prefer her offscreen persona to any of her work -- to the extent they can actually be distinguished.

I did like the faded look at of final couple of years.

Bette Davis had bravado and people mistaken that for talent.

Katharine Hepburn had an upper class accent and people mistook that for talent.

Katharine Hepburn: Pretentious Poser or General Dyke?

Wasn't Bette Davis upper crust? She attended some ritzy prep school in my hometown of Ashburnham, Mass. My mother taught there in the '90s and they made a big issue of it.

[quote]If you're a man or woman trading sex for work you are part of the problem.

What problem?

Davis was comfortably middle-class. Hepburn, upper class. Crawford, and, even moreso, Stanwyck, grew up in poverty

Let's face it if modern audiences are going to rent either of these two women's films outside of queens the majority goes to Kate. I can't even see how this is a contest. Long Day's Journey into Night, The Lion in Winter, A Delicate Balance, and On Golden Pond.

Let's face it if modern audiences are going to rent either of these two women's films outside of dykes the majority goes to Bette. I can't even see how this is a contest. All About Eve, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Little Foxes, and Now, Voyager.

If any general adult audience today outside of queens rents these women's movies the majority are going to be Kate's. Adam's Rib, Long Day's Journey into Night, Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond.

I don't see how this is even a contest.

Sorry the first time I posted it said it did not go through.

About Eve, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Little Foxes, and Now, Voyager

A tired old queen at the movies film festival. You're stretching it beyond all believability. Yes they're wonderful films but the general audience doesn't give a shit about them.

You might as well have said Of Human Bondage, Jezebel, Dark Victory and The Old Maid.

R258 is finally someone who appreciates Kate's body of work. And why so much hate for lesbians.i dont get why Hepburns sexuality should be an issue.

Long Day's Journey into Night, The Lion in Winter, A Delicate Balance, and On Golden Pond.

A tired old dyke at the movies film festival. You're stretching it beyond all believability. Yes they're wonderful films but the general audience doesn't give a shit about them.

[quote]And why so much hate for lesbians.

No hate for lesbians. But a lot of hate for Gay Men, e.g., 'queens'.

[quote]i dont get why Hepburns sexuality should be an issue.

Because there is no differentiating Hepburn offscreen from Hepburn onscreen.

Interest in The Lion in Winter alone is going to demolish anything of Davis's.

[quote] Interest in The Lion in Winter alone is going to demolish anything of Davis's.

You're obviously operating in your own world, R264.

R263. I dont agree, but same could be said of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy etc your point is?

R265 you seriously think Davis could have done that part better, with more nuance and skill? She'd have been flailing her arms and bugging her eyes. Oh and putting those weird pauses between every word. "Id... hang you ...from.. the nipples.... But you'd shock...the children" bats eyes.

R265 You think people would have more interest in Catered Affair, All About Eve, WEHTBJ? You're delusional beyond imagination.

May we PLEASE get to discussing moi?

Miss Davis, please post on your own thread!

Incidentally, what's with the extra E in her name? I know that's how it's spelled on her birth certificate, but she was christened Norma Jean Baker' and that's the name/spelling she went by in childhood. Her wedding invitations to her first husband is spelled like that.

Bette Davis being a cunt to Marilyn in the HBO movie NORMA JEAN AND MARILYN starring Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, respectively.

I understand her extra E, it's like we're soul mates

I wonder if KHepburn ever aspired to work with MM?

She fought in vain for the role Charisse plays in Something's Got to Give.

R275 Cyd Charisse?

[quote]She fought in vain for the role Charisse plays in Something's Got to Give.

Um...no.

R277, I read that as "she fought in vain for the role of Clarissa Explains it All".

If she had lived do you think her career would've stalled like Hepburn's?

Which Hepburn?

Audrey, let's say.

To all the people saying she’s an icon and they don’t get it: Relax. She’s on her way out. As the decades progress there are fewer and fewer people who even know who she was.

Same is true of all the big stars of the 50s and 60s. Ask a kid today who Gregory Peck was and you’ll get a blank stare. Ok it’s not as bad with MM, but it’s just a matter of time.

It's amazing how many models and actresses still honor her in photo shoots.

True, R283. It's beyond cliche now.

R282 you're comparing Gregory Peck to MM? He never had her level of fame nor her post-mortem legendary status. She's practically mythical at this point.

Have any of her modern fangurls seen her films?

Her look is iconic: Blonde hair, red lips, pale skin, mole -- and like a logo -- easy to identify.

School is for the average bell curvers. It’s those on the poles, the very intelligent and the mediocre to dumb that are the most likely to drop out. Which category M belonged to, I have no idea.

I imagine if Hollywood didn't work out she would've just found a rich husband and settled down by the mid-fifties.

That’s hilarious r285! Gregory Peck was one of the most famous leading men of his age when MM was seen as a glorified bimbo.

Five Oscar noms and one win.

R290 nevertheless, he was never as big as Marilyn in her prime, Oscars and nominations notwithstanding. More respected, yes.

R283 Ugh. I hate those Marilyn homage photo shoots. At one point during the mid 2000s it was out of control. Every up and coming starlet just had to do a softly shot "Marilyn " set of photos. And talk about their "connection " to Monroe. If you're going to pay homage to someone at least pick someone less overdone.

I read her essays on postmodernism once and I have to say that I was impressed.

Her work on radiology is also impressive.

Why can't your favourite old time actress just be a dumb whore?

I love Joan Crawford -- but I don't make her out to be a saint.

Why do MM's fans feel the need to constantly inform us that she really was 'gifted'?

Dunderhead Park now renting.

Is that her former residence?

She cured cancer.

I wonder if she's really attractive? Fraus seem to love her in a way that they don't love genuinely beautiful women.

I assume had she lived she'd look like later in Ginger Rogers by the end.

Exactly what R24 said. When I was a kid I heard somebody say, "Always try to read books that are a little beyond you; a little outside your comfort zone. That's how you learn." Maybe that's what she was doing. In any case, trying to improve yourself is never a bad thing.

R286. I'm guessing not. It's her glamourous image they like. I doubt many have sat through Gentlemen prefer Blondes or Niagra.

Scarjo is today's Marilyn. She knows how to pose her fat ass.

Or maybe it's Natalie Portman. She has the fat ass, and she's definitely (prissy, stuck up) pretentious. What's with Jewish women and thick asses?

Shelley Winters lived with her, was her friend - and said she was very intelligent, but very lost emotionally.

In all fairness to Marilyn, her childhood sounded like the stuff of nightmares. It's a mini miracle she survived it.

"What's with Jewish women and thick asses?"

I had NO idea Cum Kartrashian was Jewish!

I know a girl like this. She wanted to be a Dallas cowboys cheerleader. She was on the reality show but got kicked out for partying and posting it online. Now, all she posts on Insta is pics of her in crop tops, halter tops, bathing suits and anything else skimpy while "reading" books. She's always mentioning F. Scott Fitzgerald. Haha. A total poser wanting people to think there is more to her, but there isn't. Fake ass.

Yes, sometimes there's something below the surface. Sometimes there isn't.

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.

Marilyn had something below the surface, R309, and it was a huge roiling pit of neediness and insanity.

The surface was the best part of her.

R295 You make a very good point about Monroe's fans. They have a tendency to project all these over the top positive qualities to her, it almost has a religious aspect to it. She wasn't a drooling idiot, but she was hardly an intellectual.

Fat women love her cause they want to make a case how fat women were desirable in the 50s because SLIH. They always neglect to mention how SLIH was her last hit, so no, fat was not desirable even back then..

[quote] He must have made her feel desperately insecure and inferior without even trying, and he was capable of trying.

It's sentences like this that make me love DL.

r314 refers to r40' s remarks about Arthur Miller

I don't suppose this matters really but I barely graduated high school and I'm quite bright. I didn't g to college. I didn't learn to spell until texting came along and I still spellcheck nearly everything. I've read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and quite liked them. I wonder how many posters here can say the same. The secret to Finnegans Wake, should you care to try, is to read it with an Irish brogue. I've surrounded myself with well educated people. Were I to have a maid I expect he/she would report I spend most of my time in bed watching YouTube videos. My point is one's level of education has almost nothing to do with one's intellect.

I like imagining how Marilyn’s look would have evolved through the 60s into the 70s and 80s had she lived. Picture her looking mod, or like a hippie, and then a big-haired disco diva like Liz.

Doing a Marilyn photo shoot is the quickest way to highlight how you’re not as pretty as she was.

I dislike Monroe's late 50s heavy eye liner and dark eyebrows. Her appeal lied in the softness of her features and the retro makeup made her look hardened and somewhat embalmed. Her hair also looked fried with the teased do. She should've stuck to the cherubic curls she spotted in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

R272 Oh God I remember that Marilyn movie with Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino. Terrible. Mira is all wrong, and laughable in the scene you posted. It’s like a high school play. Who thought this was a good idea?

R307, who said Jewish women had exclusive rights to thick asses? Nonethless, the two top Jewess beauties of today, Portman and ScarJo, are fat asses. Marilyn, another Jew, was a fat ass. And then...there's THIS

Marilyn's fat ass

Leah Reamini (Hungarian-Jewish ancestry) and her fat ass.

You do understand that str8 men like fat asses...? I mean, they even wrote a song about it....

Didn't say whether it was good or bad, r324.I'm just surprised by how many Jewish broads carry around fat ass cheeks.

Meanwhile, @kensingtonroyal has posted a “welcome to Instagram” for @sussexroyal, with an extremely flattering photo of Harry and Meg. No doubt there’s a sense of relief there. Like how gracious you act toward the tiresome guests as they’re finally on their way out the door.

Sorry wrong thread! Off to the royals....

Marylin converted to Judaism after she was established in the entertainment industry.

Long-rumored to be Jewish genetically, at least from her father's side, r328.

Hell, I’m intelligent and well-educated, and I have great difficulty reading Joyce and Faulkner. They are both very difficult to understand.

Marilyn Monroe: Sexy or Fat?

Fit-fat

Sexy, in a soft and feminine way.

R328 when she married Miller

I've read enough biographies about Marilyn and I wouldn't say she was an intellectual. I don't think she was trying to be, but she wanted to be able to speak with people who were intellectuals, to feel comfortable enough in social situations that she could access because of stardom. She said as much in her mini ghostwritten autobiography, "My Story". She never finished high school and that added to her insecurities. To make up for a lack of formal education, she read books on her own, which made her something of an autodidact. She was not a poseur. She was interested in self-improvement to offset her inferiority complex.

She really did read often and the Christie's auction of her possessions show that most of what she owned were books. She read poetry, literature, and books on psychology. She read "The Thinking Body" to learn how to move in ways beneficial to her acting and modelling and to improve her posture. When she was still an underpaid starlet, she spent her limited funds on acting lessons over food, entertainment, anything else. That tells you she was serious about her craft and not someone seeking fame for fame's sake, like a talentless Kardashian. You may not like her movies or acting, but she was a gifted photographic model and she could sing, too.

Her onscreen persona was a deliberate act and she knew it. It was a character she created that was popular with the public. Not much different from Charlie Chaplin's Tramp and John Wayne's heroic screen image. That many people still think she was some ditzy airhead shows that she was a pretty good actress. She sure fooled you into thinking the character role and the real woman are the same person. In "Bus Stop" she showed she could act (the critics at the time though so). Her stint at The Actors Studio in NYC paid off in that movie.

Robert Mitchum knew Marilyn before she was famous, when she was still Norma Jeane. In a documentary about her, he said: "She thought that the whole lark of being a sex goddess or a glamour queen was just that. She would play it if that's what they wanted. And, as a matter of fact, she burlesqued it, really, because she thought the whole thing was very very funny."

This pop culture narrative that Marilyn was a perpetual victim is tedious and incorrect. Yes, she had her demons. Yes, she was addicted to prescription pills to treat health problems – endometriosis and chronic insomnia. She had stage fright and fear of failure, which accounted for her tardiness in her career and her refusal to come to the set. And, like many other actresses at the beginning of their careers, she could not avoid the casting couch. In those days, the only actresses who were spared were the rich girls, the ones who were protected by wealthy relatives and powerful connections, like Grace Kelly, Gene Tierney, and Elizabeth Taylor. If you were a pretty woman from a humble background, you were vulnerable and exploited in Hollywood.

She overcame obstacles and showed strength in several instances:

At the height of her fame, she battled her studio (20th Century-Fox) over her slave contract and won, getting a higher salary and more creative freedom, something which Bette Davis tried and failed to achieve years earlier.

She divorced her 1st husband, mainly because he didn't approve of her promising modelling career. She divorced her 2nd husband (Joe DiMaggio) because he didn't approve of her movie career, was physically abusive to her on several occasions, and wanted her to be a housewife. She was the breadwinner during her marriage to 3rd husband (Arthur Miller).

She also saved Arthur Miller's ass during the communist witch hunts led by the HUAC. She publicly spoke of her support for him when he was under investigation, risking her own career. She and Miller could easily have been blacklisted. Because of her popularity with the public, the government eventually left Miller alone. Years before this, she was found reading communist writings on the set of a film and made no apologies for it, even though she was warned not to continue. This was a woman who sympathized with the underdog and the working class. She had depth. You really think some shallow person like Anna Nicole Smith would've read that or Rilke or listened to classical music, things Marilyn was known to do? Once again, you're only focused on the screen persona and not the person's actions in real life.

Before she was famous, her wealthy agent, Johnny Hyde, asked her to marry him. He was sick and near death. He was also already married. He told her he would leave his wife and she would inherit his money if she accepted his proposal. She refused. No doubt she had slept with him. She cared for him but told him she wasn't in love with him. If she had been a gold digger like some of her characters, she could've agreed and been set for life. She said, “But I would be taken even less seriously than I am now!" Unlike a gold digger, she wanted to have a career and support herself.

She helped Ella Fitzgerald's career in a time of overt racism. Ella told the story of how Marilyn got her a gig at the popular, but whites-only, Mocambo nightclub:

“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild."

“The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it."

Marilyn wasn't some doormat who never exercised her own agency. Essentially an orphan with no money, she couldn't have reached the top in Hollywood if she didn't have inner resources. She could've become a feminist because the examples above show that she would fight for things that mattered to her, regardless of what men wanted. She didn't put up with abusive and unsupportive husbands. She divorced them. Her later dependence on prescription pills negatively affected her behavior and reliability, but it's important to remember that doctors then didn't fully understand the side effects of pills and how addictive they could be. The studios regularly gave their stars drugs and "vitamin shots" to squeeze all the work (and profits) they could get out of them.

Marilyn's rare combination of sensuality and girlish innocence is hard to fake if that's not natural to your personality. She definitely had a screen presence that was hard to ignore (a great example being her scenes with Olivier – you didn't even notice him, something others have mentioned).

We only "know" these details of her life because of the hundreds of Marilyn books written AFTER her death (The Marilyn Encyclopedia, published in 1999, counted over 300 in English, not including books in foreign languages). Twenty years later, I'm betting the count has surpassed 400. She kept much of her personal life private. Then, as well as now, people projected whatever they wanted onto her image because she was an enigma. She still is. All those biographers can't agree on the details. There's plenty of speculation. After reading many of them, especially the ones that interviewed people who knew her, you see patterns. Those predisposed to disliking her and want confirmation bias won't bother. They'll assume she was a recreational druggie, dumb, superficial, whatever simplistic tabloid version that's available to the lazy.

“Marilyn played the best game with the worst hand of anybody I know.” ~Edward Wagenknecht

You bitter queens really know so little yet have so much to say..I had the distinct pleasure of going through Monroe's personal library before the famous Christie's auction. Many of her books had numerous interesting observations,notes to self and questions written in her handwriting scrawled on the sides of pages. Many paragraphs were highlighted. Monroe not only read these books but made memos regarding content. So much garbage spewed on this page about MM. You really are a ridiculous gaggle of sad morons.. Fuck off.

^ To the eldergay who went through her library before auction, did you bid on any of them?

The only actress of the era that seems to be generally admired here is Stanwyck. Davis, Crawford, Monroe, Gardner, Bacall, Garland, Taylor, etc., etc., have all been savaged in ways that suggest that they spent a lot of time off-screen beating gay men to death with cricket bats.

It's a bit surprising the level of heat raised by a bunch of dames who are all dead and unlikely to have stolen anybody's cab.

She put so much effort into self improvement. Compared to the shallow, callous celebrities we have now, she is refreshing and earnest.

R131.. I believe she was one of the most photogenic women ever... never looked bad in a photograph. Even when she was sad, in candid shots, and not "on"... she photographed beautifully. We are lucky to have a wide and extensive record of her.

Looks pretty bad in the fifth one down. Dead in the eyes. If you could see them.

R340, I'm all for self-improvement and have done a fair amount myself, but there's still a difference between someone who has a degree in Russian literature and someone who reads Dostoyevsky as part of a self-improvement campaign. I don't know that Monroe appreciated the difference, she wanted to be taken seriously so very badly, but made the mistake of spending time around Miller and his crowd. Self-improvement could have impressed other movie people, but to Miller and his ilk, reading books without enrolling in an advanced degree program just made you a poseur.

I doubt she could have found someone worse for her self-esteem than Miller if she'd tried.

"She read fat." - Miller

Highschool dropout can still read. Shock.

[quote] Fit or fat?

This thing broke chairs.

Wide and fat.

[quote] I'm all for self-improvement and have done a fair amount myself, but there's still a difference between someone who has a degree in Russian literature and someone who reads Dostoyevsky as part of a self-improvement campaign.

Considering what we all know about Ivy League degrees, I'm not sure that there's anything about Miller's crowd that was automatically "better", by the standards of proven intellect, than what Marilyn was packing. These people were, and are, mostly frauds.

[quote] She divorced her 1st husband, mainly because he didn't approve of her promising modelling career. She divorced her 2nd husband (Joe DiMaggio) because he didn't approve of her movie career, was physically abusive to her on several occasions, and wanted her to be a housewife. She was the breadwinner during her marriage to 3rd husband (Arthur Miller).

What about all the women she slept with? Including that teen girl...

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

15 dyke affairs, according to this link.

R349/R350/R351 those are lies. Marilyn was strictly for dick. She possibly had something with her first acting coach Natasha Lytess but it was one-sided. I believe that teen story was second-hand, as told by a friend of a friend of the girl's after she died, so hardly reliable.

"15 dyke affairs, according to this link. "

And how many dicks did she sample...

1,500? 15,000?

How do you know they're lies, R352? The Bardot encounter, for example, was related by Bardot herself. Was she lying?

I will agree with you, broadly, however: it's very easy to make up ridiculous celeb stories when the given celeb is long-dead.

That said, it appears that a number of Marilyn's lesbian affairs are true. As to how many women she slept with, well, that's another matter.

Lawford called her a lesbian.

R355 you just admitted it's gossip. If you do actual research, Marilyn was not a lesbian. She had a daddy complex, always looking for a father figure. She may have experimented, possibly with acting coach Nathasha Lytess, who was infatuated with MM, but she did not pursue female romantic/sexual relationships.

R356, since when is "gossip" automatically untrue? Are you illiterate? Gossip is not, by definition, automatically without truth. Gossip can be, by definition, factual. It seems you lack logic.

Further, some of the information comes directly from women she slept with, such as Bardot. She is also known to have become obsessed with other women, basically stalking Garland and Stanwyck; this points to some kind of romantic/sexual infatuation. She also confessed to having sex with Joan Crawford. On tape.

You sound very upset about this, yet you do nothing to directly challenge that same information. That would seem to go against fact, or reason.

In fact, by saying something is untrue, simply because that's what you believe, you make yourself into a massive hypocrite.

Maybe you should follow your own advice, and do some research. That would include research on female sexuality, which is overwhelmingly bi, unlike men (who are almost always gay or straight).

^ Actually, you're the one who seems upset.

After Monroe became a sex goddess, her first husband, Jim Dougherty, quoted by the Daily Mail, used to brag: ‘Never had I encountered a girl who so thoroughly enjoyed a sexual union. It made our lovemaking pure joy.’

But Martin Evans, a friend of Dougherty at the time, throws this assertion into serious doubt.

He is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: ‘She was scared. From my information, she even asked if it were possible for her to never have sex with Jim. “Could they just be friends?” she wondered.

‘To be honest, I don’t think they had a good sex life ever — despite what Jim later claimed,’ he said.

Jean Negulesco, director of the Monroe film How To Marry A Millionaire, was due to visit her a day after her untimely death.

‘I still think I might have saved her if I could have got to her in time,’ the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

‘Her whole existence was a search for identity, and her sexual identity was a complete lie.

‘She told me once she had never had an orgasm with a man in her entire life,’ he said.

These testimonies are also corroborated by the taped transcripts of Monroe’s sessions with Dr Ralph Greenson, the psychoanalyst she saw towards the end of her life.

‘What I told you is true when I first became your patient,’ she says in the transcripts.

‘I had never had an orgasm. I well remember you said an orgasm happens in the mind, not the genitals.’

While a recent biography by Banner attributes this to an alleged childhood ‘sexual abuse’ and her ‘bipolar moods’ later in life, other biographers hint that the struggle may have been more existential rather than an overly psychoanalytic interpretation.

Monroe once said: ‘Everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you. They kind of… take pieces out of you. I don’t think they realize it, but it’s like "rrrr do this, rrrr do that…" but you do want to stay intact – intact and on two feet.’

Monroe’s success and the pressure to keep her fresh, energetic, beautiful, flirtatious must have been immense.

It seems she was trapped by her celebrity sex goddess status, unable to lead a fulfilled life that would suite her sexuality.

Her heart and passion was, according to the Mail’s Michael Thornton, oriented towards women.

In the session transcripts Monroe also admitted to having sexual encounters with actresses Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1969, another star, Betty Grable, stated that she had found Monroe’s pursuit of her ‘sometimes scary’.

Apparently another female star Monroe pursued and propositioned was Judy Garland, who married three gay men among her five husbands.

She also seemed to have been in love with her acting coaches, Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg.

Shortly before Monroe signed with Columbia Pictures in 1948, she met Natasha Lytess, with whom she seemed to have had a love relationship.

In 1950, Monroe moved into Lytess’s apartment along with her father-figure, the venerable Hollywood agent Johnny Hyde.

When Hyde died from a heart attack in December 1950, Natasha rescued Marilyn from a suicide attempt with a drug overdose.

Monroe told her close friend, actor Ted Jordan, that she and Natasha were sleeping together: ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Sex is something you do with people you like. What could be wrong with a natural act?’

[quote] ^ Actually, you're the one who seems upset.

Upset? I'm questioning the other person's illogic, lack of literacy, and complete lack of any evidence to support their claims. If you want to point out where I'm wrong on these matters, have at it.

Otherwise, what you're providing is just another emotionalized statement, free of any underlying evidence other than your own "feelings". Circular.

But, you know, birds of a feather...

Marilyn Monroe had a secret lesbian affair with her domineering German acting teacher, newly unearthed documents reveal. They show that the actress lived as ‘man and wife’ with Columbia Pictures drama coach Natasha Lytess for two of the seven years they worked together from 1948 to 1955. When they first met in 1946 when Monroe was 20. Speaking in the 1962 interview, Lytess said: 'She couldn’t speak, she didn’t know how to open her mouth, and she feared everything.' She also claimed the actress was 'always naked' in the home they shared. But, she added, the actress was also crippled with insecurities. 'She was afraid of giving up all that had made her as Marilyn the sexiest girl: dresses, make-up, moves. Because she thought she had nothing to give except sex appeal. In fact it’s interesting because she really hated sex!' Natasha, who died from cancer in 1964, said she was with Marilyn for ten years and they were so close the actress would often insist that they held hands, even when they were filming a scene. 'On the set I was always very close to her,' she said in the interview. 'I had to be so close to her that she was always asking: "Can she be a little bit closer to me?" The director answered, "Yes but we see her in the camera."

"That said, it appears that a number of Marilyn's lesbian affairs are true. As to how many women she slept with, well, that's another matter. "

Oh, I'm willing to believe she got with women. She wasn't picky!

And her neediness was epic and bottomless. Her first choice for people to cling to were "daddy" figures, but she'd take love from anyone prepared to give it.

[quote]That would include research on female sexuality, which is overwhelmingly bi, unlike men (who are almost always gay or straight).

This is bullshit. Take a look at the history of past civilizations, and what you will see is that when bisexuality appears, it is always between men. In classical Greece, ancient Rome, pre-Meiji Japan, feudal China, Ottoman Turkey, pre-Revolutionary Iran, etc., it seems that practically all men, or at least all men of renown, were gay or bisexual; on the other hand, we know of only two women in all these civilizations - Sapho and Erinna, both Greek - who were not heterosexual.

This story that all women are bi started with lab tests that show that women show genital arousal in reaction to both heterosexual and lesbian sex videos. These tests, however, say nothing about the sexual behavior of the testee in the real world, especially with regard to women. The same tests also show that, unlike the typical man, normal women also demonstrate sexual arousal towards animal sex videos and masochism, despite the fact that bestiality is, I believe, more common among men and that the incidence of proper masochism is more or less equal in both sexes. As far as I know, women have never been studied using tests of genital arousal regarding their reactions to child material, but, based on the results obtained in other areas, I would not be surprised if they showed more pedophilic arousal than men in these tests. laboratory, despite the fact that true pedophilia is much more common among males and that only 10% of child molesters are female.

What these tests demonstrate, therefore, is not that women are bisexual, but that their pattern of sexual arousal is relatively undifferentiated - which does not say anything about their sexual behavior in real life.

But was she a poseur? That is the question here.

"Take a look at the history of past civilizations, and what you will see is that when bisexuality appears, it is always between men."

Actually, what history shows us is more attention paid to the private lives and sexual lives of men, than women. What women did in private wasn't considered news, or worthy of attention, and in many cultures it was deliberately kept from the men who wrote history.

So if history tells us little about bisexual women, it doesn't mean that historical women weren't bisexual.