The Latest Marilyn Monroe Special..PBS

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

Just thot I'd hip you to this. First of all I think we're pretty much over marilyn comment specials. I thot so too and I'm glad I watched this one.
What was good about this special, can we call it a special? was that almost all of it was interviews w/the Marilyn photographers. There is one interview w/Gloria Steinem who wrote an intro to some Marilyn book and personally I found her particularly sour and devoid of any insight in her interview and EVEN more dour were the comments from Mailer who wrote an infamous Marilyn Monroe book. I hope he never kept notes on my family.
The main thing in the docu was the photographers notes from them personally on film. There was alot of good commentary even I hadn't even seen.
Everyone seems to know a different Marilyn and yet they all seem t know the same one......
.....The greatest Marilyn mystery to me will allways be why she went to the Actor's Studio and ended up where she did. And those f'n Strasberg's were her 'friends'....

 

[B_Nick8]

I haven't seen it. Is it running currently?

 

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

Yes. It was on right befor posted. www pbs.org for the schedule.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Not sure what you mean by 'ending up where she did'...

Despite coming up in a culture where women had to run the gauntlet of 'casting couches' before even being considered for a role... Marilyn managed to become the top female box office draw of her time.

That's called success... and it was not merely on the basis of photographing well... Her turns in Niagra, Bus Stop, and The Seven Year Itch pretty much cemented her reputation as an actress of depth and subtlety... even when playing over the top.
Contrast the vulnerable awkwardness of her role in Bus Stop, to the consummate self possessed performer she displayed in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes... that's a range she developed at the actor's studio.
And the fact that someone seen as a dumb blonde managed to show that kind of improvement in her works pretty much cemented the reputation of the actor's studio..

But success onscreen did not translate into success in her private life... She never had the family she wanted, the children she craved, and that is a sorrow no man can ever really understand. The men of her era had terrific difficulty dealing with the attention of other men and the demands of celebrity on their wives... their own male egos far too fragile to be able to man up enough for that woman.

She lingers in the public mind because she died young and beautiful... but even more so because that inner vulnerability and sorrow came across on film and made people feel for her.

She had it all, and yet had nothing that mattered to her...

That tragedy plays across her face in the photos that people still can not tear their eyes away from.