Marilyn.

 

I have never been obsessed with Marilyn Monroe but I am haunted by this picture.  It was taken by Alfred Eisenstadt for Life magazine in 1953.  It looks as though someone has just walked past and said, "Hey, Marilyn!  I'm goin' around the corner in a minute.  You want a coffee?"

It looks as though she is about to speak.  It looks as though she might say:

"Yes, please.  Can I have a mocha?"

or

"Gee, I'm out of cash.  Can you spot me 5 bucks?"

None of us has ever heard Marilyn Monroe speak to friends in an ordinary voice about ordinary things; it's just not there for us to remember.

Was it there for her?

This picture stays with me because it is so different from the other pictures that flood the mind when we think: Marilyn Monroe.  When I look at those pictures I see an ordinary midwestern face transformed into a shout by makeup- lids heavy with eyeliner and false lashes, lips fattened with red paint, a turned-up nose hiding under face powder.

An ordinary face disappearing into an advertisement for extraordinary things.

She was found dead on August 5,1962.  Whether it was a suicide, an accidental overdose or a devious murder depends on who you are.

Even her death had a glamour that obscured reality.

Her overdose planted the romantic myth of addiction in the popular mind; the notion that special, "sensitive" souls are driven to destroy themselves by this cruel world.

Anyone who has ever lived with the reality of substance abuse loses patience with that idea pretty fast.

Nevertheless, actors and actresses today continue to trade on it.  The modern career path has developed a stereotypical arc: youthful 'phenom,' troubled relationships, erratic behavior, then the red-carpet walk to rehab, followed by a resurgent career and dozens of magazine interviews showing a 'new maturity.'

Our belief in the Marilyn Myth smooths the middle part.  Poor thing, we cluck, so talented.  So--lost.

We do this, in part, because Marilyn Monroe never walked that red carpet into rehab, never made the cover of Redbook or Good Housekeeping afterward with a story of redemption.

But what if she had?

I'm not sure America would have known what to do with an aging Marilyn Monroe.  I'm not sure she would have known what to do with herself.  By 1956 she had demonstrated a true gift for acting in Bus Stop and had studied with legendary coach Lee Strasberg.  But she was also Marilyn Monroe(tm)- the big-busted, bleached blonde with a die-away voice meant for midnight liaisons fueled by champagne.

It was the second incarnation that sold the tickets.

In 1968 'Women's Libbers' protested the Miss America pageant on the boardwalk in Atlantic City by tossing bras and girdles into a trash can and crowning a sheep.  Miss Monroe would have been 42.  Cosmetics were not kind to skin and hair in that era and cosmetic surgery was in its infancy.  What place could she have made for herself, her hair fried by decades of bleaching, her famous face beginning to wrinkle?

Prettiness itself was going out of style.

Perhaps she would have surprised us.  Perhaps she would have claimed an Oscar for her portrayal of Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichol's The Graduate in 1967.

Or perhaps she would have dropped out of sight, emerging for one or two embarrassing 'cameos' in the 1970s- brief guest shots in disaster epics like The Towering Inferno or The Posiedon Adventure.

She would have been close to 50 by then.

We like to think that in this enlightened era we 'appreciate women of a certain age' and we 'celebrate maturity.'

Take a look at the over-40 actresses walking around with their eyebrows hiked halfway up their foreheads and their waistlines liposuctioned down to size, and think again.

Would Marilyn have taken her famous face to a surgeon for preservation?

I return to the Eisenstadt photo.  I imagine her with a thick waist and grey hair, speaking in that unheard, natural voice.

"Oh, well you know, Arthur was just like that..and don't get me started on Joe...look, there's a 50 on the table there- would you go get me a mocha?"

She would be 82, now.

And to be Marilyn at 82 would take a toughness and a self-knowledge unknown to most of us.

Comments

[rebecca]

I don't think I've ever seen this photo of her. You're right, it is haunting.

Celebrity is such a horrible thing. People revel in the things that go wrong with celebs. Look at Britney Spears -- even if she does clean up her act and get her life straightened out, people will still know her as the teen sexpot babymama who flipped out, lost her kids, and shaved her head.

I think that just being a celebrity -- especially a female celeb -- in general takes a toughness and self-knowledge unknown to most of us. I really don't know who would want that kind of lifestyle, but have a certain respect for those who don't get crushed by it.