The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe: Thoughts on Myth-Making

Thank you to whoever sent me the book The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. There was no message but I assume it was someone who reads this blog – so thank you. I’ve been wanting to read it ever since it came out.

The book is an exploration of the nature of myths, and how they are created. Marilyn Monroe was a real woman, just an actress really, but she has become a myth. Why? We could talk about it forever.

Sarah Churchwell, the author of the book, looks at how certain myths were created and perpetuated, in terms of Monroe. The facts are well-known – but certain untruths have been passed on, or certain interpretations. Even in death, everyone wants a piece of Marilyn Monroe. There was Norman Mailer’s book about her, there was Gloria Steinem’s book, each of them creating a myth in the process. Every single person who knew Monroe (except for Joe DiMaggio and her beloved makeup artist and confidante) published some kind of a memoir about her. “My Summer with Monroe”. “My Wild Night with Marilyn Monroe”. These memoirs, subjective, and driven by with self-interest, are then passed on as truth. This is what happens with myth. Was Monroe a damaged little girl? Or was she a feminist before her time? Was she just one of the most successful results of the casting couch Hollywood has ever seen? Or was she a true talent?

It reminds me of the whole Sylvia Plath after-death phenomenon. Her memory was co-opted by her cultish followers who needed to cast her in some sort of feminista epic struggle. Ted = evil villain. Sylvia = martyr. The fact of her WORK was sometimes lost in all of the proprietary posturing. For a lot of the followers, the poems are merely autobiographical. That is why they are interesting to these people: not because they are good art, but because they support their case about Sylvia. Now, I say all this because I WAS one of those people once , it’s a very young-woman thing to do, but I grew out of it, and finally just was able to love Plath’s poems as poems. But biographies of her are notoriously horrible. There are many reasons for this abysmal state of affairs. The Hughes estate, watched over by Ted Hughes’ tight-fisted sister Olwyn, would not allow any interpretation out in the public realm that ran counter to Hughes’ interests. Even after Plath’s death. Every draft of every potential biography had to go through Olwyn Hughes. Can you imagine? This only added to the general perception that Sylvia had been trapped in a controlling marriage. The draconian Hughes estate made it nearly impossible for a decent biography of Plath to come out. Their main defense was that: Ted Hughes was still alive, the two children were alive, and Sylvia could be “vicious” and there was a feeling that her children should be protected. Her children are grown ups now, older than I am, and, besides, I always found this attitude despicable. Sylvia Plath was a major poet and there has STILL not been a good biography of her written. Shameless.

Ted Hughes, by publishing his book of poems about and to Sylvia Birthday Letters, right before his death, hopefully opened the floodgates. He needed to come clean, and break his silence. He himself broke free of his sister’s iron fist. For many years Plath and Hughes remained FIXED images. Many people had a vested interest in keeping these images fixed. They made careers out of the fixed nature of the Hughes-Plath myths. I do hope that, with Hughes’ death, and with Frieda (Hughes and Plath’s daughter) making many statements recently, writing some wonderful op-ed columns, the bonds have been broken, and we can finally LOOK at these people with a bit more clarity.

The wonderful Janet Malcolm wrote a fantastic book called The Silent Woman. Its topic? How difficult it was to write a biography of Sylvia Plath. It is such a challenge that it warrants an entire book. At its essence, her book is about the nature of myth and the uncomfortable position biographers can be put in. They are eavesdroppers, snoops, and what you discover is not always convenient to your idea behind your book.

Marilyn Monroe is in the same pantheon. Even with the glut of material out there about her, maybe even because of that, you get the sense, still, that you are in the presence of a great mystery.

When you get right down to it, can we ever really know another human being, especially a celebrity we have never met? Even if they leave a ton of evidence behind in journals and letters – we still can’t say, definitively, that we KNOW them. Or – you CAN say that – but i think you’re missing the whole point if you do. I think that’s one of the reasons why I can’t get enough of Alexander Hamilton. And Thomas Jefferson, come to think of it. Both of those guys wrote more words than all the other founding fathers combined – letters, papers, books, pamphlets, speeches – it’s endless – we can read their actual words – but still: there’s a sense, at least from me, that they are, essentially, unexplainable. I’m reading the Chernow biography right now, and I am reading the facts of Hamilton’s horrific beginnings, followed by his journey to New York. We know that this HAPPENED. But it still amazes me. Because really: I can’t KNOW him. I can’t. I can know the facts … but his essence? His soul? What it was like to BE him? What he thought about when he was by himself? How his mind worked? A biography can’t really give you any of that stuff … there’s still so much stuff between the lines.

Marilyn Monroe, even though she is one of the most recognizable faces in the world, even though we have more images of her available to us than of any other actress, remains almost completely between the lines.

That’s the fascination.

Her acting is wonderful, and I love her comedic spirit. I love her positive and joyous screen presence. I love her innocence. Even with that body, and even in the parts she was cast in, she had an unshakeable Bambi-esque innocence, which is what endeared her to men and women alike.

Sarah Churchwell, in this book, which came out last year and got terrific reviews, doesn’t try to explain Marilyn Monroe – because she cannot be sufficiently explained. She tries to see how the myth has endured. There were people who had a vested interest in perpetuating the myth, but the myth was perpetuated by the adoring public as well- and that was a much more organic phenomenon. Marilyn Monroe’s legend would have lived on with or without all the self-interested tell-all memoirs, and sordid revelations, because there was something about her that people just, frankly, loved.

Marilyn would have been 80 years old today if she hadn’t died in 1962. I often wonder what her career would have been like if it hadn’t been cut short. The studio system that had so controlled her and marginalized her (the public made her a star, and the studios begrudgingly allowed it) was on its way out . The 70s were coming with brave new filmmakers, and the birth of the independents. I wonder what place Marilyn would have found for herself in all that.