Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Norma Jean

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius & it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."



It was announced at the Cannes Film Festival that Naomi Watts will play Monroe in a biopic based on author Joyce Carol Oates’s controversial, fictionalized memoir, 2000’s Blonde. The movie, also called Blonde, is to start filming in January 2011. Michelle Williams is to play Monroe in a film directed by Simon Curtis, which focuses on the screen legend’s time spent in England while filming 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier.

She is long gone but never forgotten.

Marilyn Monroe, star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, How to Marry a Millionaire & Bus Stop, was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles.

She signed her first studio contract with Twentieth Century Fox in 1946 for $125 a week, Norma Jeane dyed her hair blonde & changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe was pure & profane, & she soon became myth & metaphor as Hollywood’s most famous martyred saint. At the height of her fame, she had received 5,000 fan letters a week. Many were from men & women who talked about the sadness in her eyes, her vulnerability, &how they identified with her.

From Monroe’s first film, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, in 1948, to her last, The Misfits, in 1962, she went from studio created blonde bimbo to a trained, heartbreaking actress of depth & soul. She is beyond camp. she was different than Jayne Mansfield & Mamie Van Doren, who Hollywood used to replace her. She was irreplaceable.



On an early morning in the summer of 1962, Monroe died in her sleep at her Brentwood, California home. Suicide, accident or murder? She was 36 years old. Monroe remains a gay icon. She would have been 85 years old today. If she had lived, Monroe could have tossed off her demons & would have probably become a nimble comic actor, making fun of herself & guest hosting on SNL to acclaim & high ratings.

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