The Sheila Variations

Today ... Marilyn Monroe would have turned 80.

She was so photographed it's hard to even see her anymore - see her without the myth, the legend, the baggage, the stories about how she died, etc. All of that hovers over her, like a cloud, halo, something obscuring our access to her.

Here's a big post I wrote about her. I actually find it kind of difficult to write about her. It's too personal, almost.

And here's another one. The anecdote shared about her in that post always brings a lump to my throat. I actually heard that anecdote in person - from Johnny Strasberg himself. Yeah, I know. I am SO COOL. I had to literally calm myself down AS he was telling it.

Alex just posted a wonderful tribute - made up entirely of quotes from Marilyn.

Sam Shaw, in my opinion, captured a Marilyn that nobody else really captured.

He took some of my favorite photographs of her. Like the one below:

Sam Shaw liked to photograph her outside - just naturally beautiful and earthy, rather than all dolled up. Even the photo above, while very alluring, has a natural-ness to it. Natural light - or at least it looks natural - and her pose looks almost candid.

Here's another one from Sam Shaw: So beautiful, right??

And of course - he took my favorite photo of her ever - there's just so much in it - I could look at it forever:

And a couple more images:

The photos below were from Bert Stern's famous last session with Marilyn - which involved her drinking champagne and rolling around naked in a big white bed. There are hundreds of photos from that shoot - all of them hypnotic. She is a chameleon. That's what's so amazing about her. So many beautiful women have only ONE LOOK. They need to arrange their faces into that ONE LOOK in order to continue to be beautiful. I mean, think about the practiced red carpet smiles of all the soulless little starlets parading about now. Monroe is, by any standards, gorgeous ... but it's amazing how alive she is, in print. Laughing, pensive, mischievous, serious, shy - all of it seems real, vital, in the moment, not rehearsed ... This is what it means to be a genius at being a model. And Marilyn was a genius - I'm not sure she was as an actress, but in terms of print work? Nobody even comes close to her abilities.

Anyway:

Bert Stern sent Marilyn the proofs of what we now know was her last photo shoot. Marilyn sent the proofs back with big X-es over the ones she hated. Stern has spoken about how she didn't just put a little X up on the side, like most more vain starlets did - she just X-ed the entire image out, sometimes scribbling so hard the pen came thru the page. We shouldn't read too much into this - as so many have done. (Like: "oooooh, she wanted to destroy the very thing which made her famous".) Now there may be an element of truth in that - after all, she died very soon after these photos were taken - but make no mistake: Marilyn was as good as it gets, in terms of still photography. Her only rival in this regard is Bettie Page. Marilyn STILL sets the mark for how it should be done, and she STILL shows up the actresses of today. She USED still photography to further her persona, to play with it, to create, to add to her own mystique. The starlets of today who flounce around on the cover of Vogue and Bazaar flashing toothy smiles and siliconed cleavage should look at these rejected proofs of Marilyn's and LEARN.

I try to see the X-ed photographs through her eyes. Like: what was off, for her? What didn't she like? This was not just a neurotic moment, I don't believe. I think she was able (unlike so many people in her position) to stare at herself coldly, as though she was a product. This may have been part of her problem, in the end ... but she was never EVER just an "employee" in those photo shoots. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Here's another X-ed out one. I think it's gorgeous. For Marilyn, it didn't make the cut. (Some of the other X-ed out ones are obviously not ones to be used and she would probably be HORRIFIED that they are all in a book right now. There are some where one of her eyes is closed - or her smile looks a bit lazy - stuff she NEVER would have allowed us to see.)

Anyhoo:

And now look here. Look at this beautiful beautiful girl. Look at her sandals. Look at her hair.

How unselfconscious she seems (again: we have no idea what was going on in her heart - maybe she was being taken advantage of? Maybe she hated her hair that day? Maybe the photographer wanted to sleep with her and it made her feel awkward? We just can't know.) But she SEEMS unself-conscious - beautifully unselfconscious - and that is half the battle in being an actress. No matter how bad you feel, or how awful you feel about how your thighs look in your costume ... you must know how to SEEM unselfconscious. Marilyn always seems to have had that.

It was an act of WILL, I tell ya. This is what I believe.

The camera would never reject her. She knew how to have a relationship with it. She knew how to be loved by it. Her soul came pouring out of her because she trusted she would be received well. No rejection possible.

She was beloved.

She was not bitter about being beautiful. She didn't hate her own beauty - she was GRATEFUL for it. (She was hurt, though, that men saw her as sexually superhuman merely because of her body shape and the persona she created as an actress - she said to one of her friends, "My men expect so much of me because of the image they have made of me and that I have made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much and I can't live up to it. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy's the same as any other woman's. I can't live up to it.") But still, with all of that: she was never bitter about the beauty - because the beauty gave her a LIFE. The camera ... that was her only way out. It saw her. It looooooooved her. It made her life possible. Hence - the clear-eyed X-ing through of her own image.

I always wonder who you would be now if you were alive. I like to think you would have found happiness. I think the 1960s and 1970s might have been VERY good to you. But who knows. No one can know.

Happy birthday, Marilyn.

Posted by sheila