This is the second book published by Life to examine the life and times of Marilyn Monroe. It was originally published as a magazine special and now we have it presented as a hardback book. One thing you notice is it’s even smaller than the magazine in size. In recent times Life has produced books on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones which have been of large size with picture essays, like the original books they published over the years like ‘Life Goes To The Movies’, for example.
Why they haven’t thought to do this for their Marilyn books I do not know. When you consider how full their archives must be and how they have been writing pieces on her and the fact she has been a feature in their magazine since 1949.Here we have an attempt to write about the ‘loves’ in her life. While her three husbands are featured, Dougherty, DiMaggio and Miller, and some other loves that didn’t work out so well, Fred Karger and Yves Montand for example, they’ve totally skipped the relationship with Elia Kazan which would have added to the book more than the addition of Robert Slatzer, who forged an alliance with Marilyn for his own personal gain — to see him among the loves is a major flaw in the book, along with the Kennedy brothers.
The Kennedy’s were not a major part of Marilyn’s life like Montand or Karger were and yet her association with them goes beyond any significant relationship she had with any other men because writers seem determined to infuse the two.
These rumours were started by left wing writer Frank A. Capell in the 1960’s as an attempt to defame Bobby Kennedy’s reputation and therefore damage his career by linking him to Marilyn’s death.
On Kennedy’s death the political agenda stopped but by that time other writers began to pick up the story and it became blown out of all proportion by the likes of Fred Lawrence Guiles, Norman Mailer, Robert Slatzer, W.J. Weatherby, Anthony Summers, Donald H. Woolf and countless others — and in time it’s Marilyn Monroe’s reputation that has been at the mercy of these writers as they continue to penetrate the media which has a hunger for gossip about her and the ‘other’ men in her life, which is often sleazy. So here we have the basic idea for the book.
For Life magazine, who always wrote about Marilyn in a positive light, who she gave her last interview to in the weeks before her death and who pleaded with them ‘please do not make me a joke’ — we have a book that tries to piece together the fragments of her love life, the fact and the fiction. I expected more of the truth.
By Fraser Penney
