Marilyn Monroe, June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962

Exactly fifty years ago, Marilyn Monroe died in what I consider to be one of the most unnecessary and avoidable, and consequently also one of the most tragic deaths in Hollywood history.

As Donald Spoto has exhaustively and plausibly demonstrated in his highly commendable study on Monroe, at no point did Monroe have any intention to kill herself. Nor was she killed; that is, at least not intentionally. The ultimately fatal overdose of barbiturates and other drugs was administered by her irresponsible housekeeper who acted under the instruction of Monroe's equally irresponsible psycho-analyst.

Had both acted with greater care and the amount responsibility that befits a housekeeper, not to mention a psycho analyst, for all we know Monroe might have celebrated her 86th birthday this year.

Marilyn Monroe's grave site at the Pierce Brothers Memorial Park in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Westwood.

Heat: 3 Hot Classics To Watch

As entire parts of the planet are currently suffering under enormous heat-waves (Mid-West, Central Europe, etc.), it made me think of some movies where heat - or indeed heat-waves - are at the centre of the story or a crucial part of it.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, in movies heat, high temperatures, and heat waves are frequently used as metaphors for the sexual tension and chemistry between the main characters. Similarly, heat in movies also often symbolises - or leads to - violence, rightly suggesting that suffering heat-waves may wreak havoc with our emotions, in one way or another. Or with both, as is the case in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, where the physical attraction between Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff is such that they decide to bump off Phyllis' husband. The references to the outside heat are few, however, in Wilder's film, but they are there. Equally in
Roman Polanski's Chinatown - incidentally also set in Los Angeles - where the persistent heat is being mentioned several times throughout the film as the violence increases and the film's main characters, Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, embark on their doomed love affair. Polanski's cinematographer, the brilliant John A. Alonzo, expertly managed to make the heat almost palpable using very bright key lights and medium close-ups, thus creating a claustrophobic atmosphere not dissimilar to how one feels when suffering under a heat-wave.

Yet, the heat is not at the centre of the story and the references to it are subtle.

They're a lot less subtle, however, in Lawrence Kasdan's Bodyheat, a quasi remake of Double Indemnity, shot almost 40 years later, showing everything Wilder couldn't show at the time due to the restrictions of the Hays Code, including some steamy sex scenes between Kathleen Turner and William Hurt which caused quite a stir, even in 1981, when Bodyheat was first released. There are numerous references to the unusually hot weather - even for Florida, where the film is set; having read Turner's autobiography, however, I remember her talking about shooting Bodyheat on location in Florida and the terrible experience of pretending it to be scorching hot when, in actual fact, it was freezing cold as Florida suffered under an unusual cold spell at the time.

   

This - be warned: raunchy - scene below is followed by one of Turner and Hurt trying to cool off in the bath tub:

   

Wilder's 7-Year Itch is set in the blistering heat of a New York summer where Tom Ewell's character is going through the 7-Year Itch, in other words, having been married for 7 years, the hot and sultry New York summer throws up heretofore unknown feelings in Ewell, especially as far as his new neighbour, an aspiring motion picture actress, is concerned. 


The film's - if not film history's - most famous scene is the one where, in order to cool off, Monroe catches the breeze coming up from a subway grate, causing her skirt to twirl up.   


Yes, here, the heat is also what does Ewell in - sort of ... - though this being the 1950s, the scenes between the Monroe and Ewell character are very tame and nowhere near as steamy as the ones in Bodyheat. In fact, the film version of George Axelrod's play doesn't even go as far as the Broadway play, where Ewell and the girl -remaining nameless throughout play and film - at least get the chance of a hot and steamy one-off.

Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beneix' classic French film from 1986 has a subtitle in the original version which - sadly - was deleted from the US and UK versions, Betty Blue, 37,2 degrees in the morning, referring to the sweltering temperatures that pervade almost throughout the picture. Beneix' amour fou is as disturbing as it is beautiful, revolving as it does, around the obsessive love of a young woman, played by Beatrice Dalle, for an odd-jobs man, played by Jean-Hugues Anglade. Their - at the beginning at least - reciprocal love is set against the rugged beauty of the Languedoc region in the South of France where the mid-summer heat is matched by the violently passionate love scenes between Dalle and Anglade. 

However, as Dalle's character slips ever deeper into self-destructive madness, and the heat gives way to somewhat cooler temperatures, the otherwise mesmerising film gets ever more painful to watch.

  Bodyheat, The 7-Year Itch, and Betty Blue are all available on AMAZON. So are Double Indemnity and Chinatown. 

Marilyn Monroe - The Biography, By Donald Spoto

This August (4 August, to be precise) exactly 50 years ago, Marilyn Monroe died in circumstances which to this day don't cease to invite and inspire the wildest and most unlikely conspiracy theories. 20 years ago, the acclaimed film historian Donald Spoto intended to put an end to them once and for all by writing the definitive book on Monroe by shedding new light on the mystery surrounding her demise.

The title Donald Spoto chose for his study on the greatest and arguably most famous movie star in history, is very apt indeed - The Biography - for it suggests that it is the only one around which, of course, it isn't. In fact, there are scads of books on Monroe available, more, probably, than on any other Hollywood star, though the emphasis is on book. For what's commonly available on Monroe has little to do with any biography - let alone one that is well researched and based on empirical data - notwithstanding the fact that their authors take great pains to pass them off as such. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these books are little more than thinly veiled attempts to cash in on the Monroe legend or to be precise, on the mystery surrounding her death. Thus they abound in conspiracy theories by adding fuel to the rumours, claims, and accounts regarding an alleged affair between Monroe and Robert Kennedy, an affair, which Spoto exhaustively proves actually never happened.

Spoto covers Monroe's life over nearly 700 pages. Having read other books by him before (on Hitchcock and Crawford) I hoped that this one, too, would be equally thoroughly researched and critical by also betraying his respect and admiration for the book's subject. My hopes weren't disappointed. If anything, the quality of Spoto's study - a word I deliberately employ here as the much overused term biography doesn't do it justice given the impressive research that evidently went into his book - on Monroe even exceeds his other works. That might have to do, first of all, with the fact that Spoto is a great admirer of Monroe, something which is clearly obvious by reading the book and which is something I consider to be a prerequisite for such an undertaking. For why bother, otherwise? Secondly, as a pre eminent film historian, Spoto must have been well aware of all the countless inaccuracies and the often calculated, exploitative fiction, that have been published on Monroe and her tragic life over the years, and decided she deserved the truth to finally be brought to light.

Coming from any writer other than Spoto, a title as this - The Biography - might easily come across as sophomoric or braggy. But this being Spoto, the book more than lives up to the title's promise. It is a biography worthy of the name. And it is indeed the biography. To say it bluntly, having read several others on Monroe myself, this is the only one worth reading. The definitive study on her. Comprehensibly, Spoto does away with murky murder and conspiracy theories which might make could copy, but which have little to do with the truth which, it should be added, is actually far sadder and far more tragic than the many myths, lies and half-truths that have been circulating for half a century. These might have filled the pockets of some of their creators, but they were of no service to Monroe, who deserved better than this. In fact, what these ruthless peddlers of rumours have been doing precisely mirrors what many of the people Monroe was surrounded by during her lifetime did: using her for their own self-serving purposes, this is especially true for her shrink, the infamous Dr. Greenson, and Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray who, as Spoto suggests, was little more than Greenson's stooge.

Rather than relying on previous accounts and books published on the subject, Spoto based his study solely on empirical data, letters, documents, and oral histories to recapitulate Monroe's life and demise. Starting as far back as her great grandfather, he also refutes those who claim that Monroe's biological family had a history of mental illness. Therefore, Spoto's book was a revelation in more than just one way. For instance, Spoto also amply demonstrates that far from being depressed during her last weeks, as generally believed, Monroe was in fact in great spirits, looking forward to a future, 'she couldn't wait to begin' as she told a close friend verbatim. Having bought into the 'constantly late', 'hopelessly depressed', and the 'perennially drugged' latter-day Monroe myself, I also often wondered how the footage of her last - uncompleted - film, Something's Got to Give, could be so wonderful, virtually flawless and promising. Spoto has the answer: it was a fabrication by 20th Century Fox which sought to abandon a much troubled film project whose script, for instance, had never been completed. So why not make use of the film's star and put the blame on her, especially since her travails had already been well covered by the press and thus easily believable.

A clip from Something's Got to Give (George Cukor, 20th Century Fox, 1962, uncompleted)

Spoto uncovers all the lies and myths bit by bit and credibly exposes them for what they are. However, what's as astonishing as it is annoying is that his effort notwithstanding, these lies and myths are very persistent. They have a way of sticking like oatmeal, refusing to go away. The answer as to why they do is the same as to why they emerged in the first place: because it makes for better copy. Why destroy the myth and legend, since it's so much more exciting and exotic than the truth, which, if anything, is nothing but sordid. And terribly and utterly sad.

For anyone truly interested in the life of Marilyn Monroe and the circumstances that led to her demise almost exactly 50 years ago, this is the book to read - if you haven't done so already.

For anyone who's after melodramatic, hair-raising murder mysteries, I'd recommend, say, Robert Ludlum.

My Week With Marilyn, Simon Curtis, UK/ US 2011

My Week With Marilyn is a vain effort, I'm afraid; a film that would have been better left unfilmed. It's not that it's a particularly bad film, no, it simply isn't one that benefits anyone, neither the viewer, nor the participants, nor its subject, one of (film-)history's greatest legends, and one of the most talked about, photographed, and fatally misunderstood women of all time.

My Week With Marilyn is based on the book by Colin Clark, who collaborated with Monroe on her UK adventure, The Prince and the Showgirl back in 1957. As always with personal accounts such as memoirs and autobiographies, they have to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially when they've been written decades after the fact. Again, this doesn't automatically make them bad reading material. After all, there are many reasons why one may choose to read a book, any book, biographies and memoirs included, and factual accuracy is but one of them. The same, by the way, goes for movies, too. A movie which is based on a particular event in history may be enjoyed for all sorts of reasons other than its historical accuracy. After all, cinematography, dialogue, acting, costumes, and so on, contribute a great deal to the finished product.

However, I'm afraid to say that My Week With Marilyn has little to offer in that respect as the film's production values are average at best. Moreover, its title already bears so much promise and anticipation - my week with Marilyn - that really, that is what the viewer expects. But there's not much there, either. At least for those who are remotely familiar with the life of the famous lady in question as her life, moves, antics, ups and downs, and so on, are probably better documented than that of any other movie star. Put differently, whether the budding love story between Monroe and Clark happened such as it is portrayed in the movie is something I don't know, of course. Nevertheless, the way it is portrayed is uninspired, though, to be fair, I'm not sure if given its subject-matter, there would have been a better, more adequate, way to tackle it.

Michelle Williams has the thankless task of portraying the most famous woman in motion picture history, one whose image, looks, and so on, have become part of our collective memory. But besides the sheer impossibility of doing justice to the person in question - as well as to our image of her - impersonating Monroe is a particularly tricky undertaking for she had what some claim amounted to a love affair between herself and the camera. Directors who worked with Monroe spoke of a 'frightened girl, terrified to go in front of the camera', 'a relatively plain beauty', 'a good actress, and a much better comedienne' - never mind that she was much underrated, and more often than not, typecast as the dumb blonde - in other words, nothing about Monroe was all that different from other actresses, let alone hinted at the phenomenon that she'd go on to outshine any of her colleagues, past and present.

Yet, in the transformation from celluloid to screen something happened. A transformation in Monroe. Suddenly there was magic. She radiated, illuminated, the screen. She had presence -  in a way that is extremely rare, even among the greatest of actresses. Thus, for any actress attempting to live up to that is a challenge, to say the least, and even one as talented as Williams must have known what she's up against.

This is exemplified at the film's beginning, though I'm sure  inadvertently so, when we witness Colin watching a contemporary screening of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. At first, we only hear music of what we instantly recognise to be the first bars of Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend. Colin seems mesmerised, and so are we, until the camera pans from Colin's face to the screen  and we realise that he's in fact watching Williams playing Monroe rather than Monroe herself. My jaw dropped instantly, and I cannot believe the director didn't know that this was the effect this scene was going to provoke in any viewer who's ever seen Monroe on screen - which means practically everybody - especially in that particular scene! Why Curtis didn't simply keep the camera on Colin's mesmerised face in a long take close-up, capturing his emotions while watching Monroe, leaving the rest up to the viewer's imagination, is anybody's guess. This clumsiness by the director is one of the gravest flaws in the film for looking at Williams doing Monroe's signature number it remains unfathomable to the viewer why Colin  should be mesmerised. But this obviously is precisely what this scene was supposed to establish, for the whole premise of My Week With Marilyn hinges on Colin's infatuation with Marilyn, on his being caught in the rapture of her magic. Alas, what we see is bereft of any magic whatsoever. And if we're unable to believe him, relate to him - the whole film falls apart.

Though Miss Williams undeniably is one of the best actresses of her generation - live up to Monroe she doesn't. Can't.

Having not read Clark's book, I'm of course unable to judge it. The film, though, is neither good nor is it particularly bad. It simply is one that is forgotten the minute you leave the theatre. And that is about the worst thing you can say about any film.

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 4: 20th Century Fox

Looking at the history of the major Hollywood studios, it quickly becomes apparent that the one thing they all had in common was the fact that, being the product of a fledgling industry, they all expanded rapidly while trying to adapt to the shifting tastes of an ever fickle audience.

Depending as they did, of course, on an ever erratic economy, this usually resulted in a number of sudden changes of ownership and takeovers.

This applies in particular to Twentieth Century Fox, and hardly any studio - with the possible exception of RKO - matched its extraordinary ups and downs. The choppy and inconsistent history of Twentieth Century Fox was reflected in the quality of its product. Unlike Warner Brothers, MGM, or Paramount, whose output during the golden age of Hollywood often bore a distinct, idiosyncratic look, the films of Twentieth Century Fox were as incongruous in quality as their look was interchangeable.


William Fox

The Fox Film Corporation was founded by William Fox in 1914, who, similar to his competitor, Adolph Zukor, also was of Hungarian-Jewish descent. Like Zukor, Fox had once owned a chain of penny arcades and nickelodeons before breaking into distribution, and later, production. Operating from his studio on Staten Island, Fox then relocated to New York. He is credited with discovering the sultry siren Theda Bara, whose box-office appeal was contributory to the company’s speedy growth. Also under contract to Fox were Raoul Walsh and J. Gordon Edwards, Blake’s father, who became Bara’s main director. Like MGM and Paramount, Fox, too, acquired a chain of theatres to ensure his company’s presence on the ever-expanding film-market.


Theda Bara

But after years of steady expansion, by 1924 the studio began to face strong competition from its rivals, which, unlike Fox, had the advantage of having an impressive array of bankable stars and directors. John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Frank Borzage joined the line-up of directors, and in 1927 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau arrived from Germany. Murnau’s films of his German period, Nosferatu (1921), Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924), and Faust (1926), were resounding triumphs that didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood, which was forever on the hunt for new talent.


Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau

Murnau’s first film for Fox, Sunrise (1927) was enthusiastically received. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, held in the Blossom Room of the newly built Roosevelt Hotel, Sunrise won in three categories,including one for the film’s leading actress, Janet Gaynor. Following up on the success of Sunrise , Murnau shot Four Devils (1928) and Our Daily Bread (1929), which were both box-office failures. Tragically, just shortly after the completion of his masterpiece Tabu (1931), Murnau died in a car crash outside Santa Barbara.

The late 1920s were a highly competitive period for the ever-expanding studios, which one by one left their - silent - infancy behind and broke into sound. Fox had embraced sound early on, developing its own sound system, called Fox Movietone. In order to accommodate the requirements of the fledgling technique, Fox built a new studio, including sound stages, in the Westwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

The year 1929 was a bad one for William Fox: Not only was he seriously injured in a car accident, his company was also badly hit by the stock market crash. To make matters worse, the Justice Department sued him for his monopolistic dealings, and he was eventually forced to sell his shares in the company. Harley Clarke, who apparently had a hand in ousting Fox, took over as president, only to be replaced by Sydney Kent a few years later.

Financially however, the studio was prospering again, due mainly to the commercial hits of Janet Gaynor’s films and the arrival of Will Rogers in 1929, who was the studio’s biggest box-office draw until his premature death a mere 6 years later.
Cavalcade (1933), based on Noel Coward’s play, won Fox its first Best Picture Oscar to date, also resulting in big box-office receipts. In 1935, the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, headed by Joseph Schenk and the fast and furious Darryl F. Zanuck, who, prior to founding his own company, had been production chief at Warner Brothers.

Thus, Twentieth Century-Fox was born.

Zanuck, along with Kent, became the company’s presidents, and he went on to oversee the better part of the company’s 50 or so A features a year, supervising everything from production to editing. During the second half of the 1930s, the films of Shirley Temple became the company’s bread and butter. In dire need of stars, Zanuck signed Don Ameche, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Loretta Young, whom he had brought along from his former company, Twentieth Century Pictures. Even tough Zanuck’s pictures were successful in terms of box office receipts, their artistic merits remain somewhat debatable, and apart from John Ford’s efforts such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the bulk of Fox's fare was sheer escapist entertainment.

In 1941 Syndey Kent died, and with Zanuck being called into war service, Spyros Skouras, formerly running the company’s theatre chains, was appointed president.


"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"

The 1940s saw an artistically more interesting period for the company, releasing films like The Oxbow Incident (1943), Wilson (1944), and the sinister film-noirs Laura (1944) and Leave Her To Heaven (1946), to name but a few. The quality of the films during that decade is unparalleled in the studio’s history. This is underlined by the fact that three Best Picture Oscars would go to the studio during that period, starting with John Ford’s Going My Way in 1941, followed up by Kazan's Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1947, leading up to the classic All About Eve (1950), which currently ranks at number 16 of the American Film Institute’s list of the best American films of the past 100 years. In addition to that, in-house director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, won the Academy Award for best director twice in a row, first for A Letter To Three Wives in 1949, and a year later for All About Eve.

The 1950s got off to a bad start when Twentieth Century Fox, too, was forced to get rid of its theatre chain, which, with the advent of television, resulted in a box office slump. However, with a young, so far neglected starlet under contract to the studio, the fate of Twentieth Century Fox would soon turn around again.

Her name was Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn was first signed up by Zanuck in 1946, who, failing to fully realise her potential, put her in the mediocre Scudda-Hoo!, Scudda-Hay!, where she had a mere decorative part, only to drop her contract the following year yet again. Passed around from studio to studio, and doing a pin-up calendar in between, by 1950, Monroe had met a number of influential honchos and executives. One of them, Johnny Hyde, was a big shot at the William Morris Agency. Upon reading the screenplay to All about Eve, he persuaded Zanuck to give his protégée the part of Claudia Casswell, the famous “graduate of the Copacabana School of Acting”. Zanuck bowed, and so Monroe was back at Fox, with a seven-year contract and the part of Miss Casswell in her pocket. Of course, Marilyn went on to become the studio’s biggest draw since the days of Will Rogers and Shirley Temple, and her films How To Marry A Millionaire (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1954), River Of No Return (1954), and Bus Stop (1955) were among the studio’s biggest grossers during the 1950s.


La Monroe

But apart from Monroe, who, to be sure, would end up doing her best work for other studios (Some like it Hot, 1959, and The Misfits, 1960, both United Artists), there was little else the studio had going for itself. Elia Kazan and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the studio’s most notable directors, both left in 1953 and 1951, respectively. Resident actors were few and far between. They included bomb shells Jayne Mansfield and Joan Collins, as well as the no doubt brilliant Joanne Woodward. With Zanuck’s exit in 1956, there was no disguising the fact that the studio was in trouble and in dire need of some much needed artistic input and talent.

The extravagant production of Cleopatra (1960-1962), whose costs were skyrocketing by the minute, turned out to be the studio’s downfall. In order to pay for the extraordinarily expensive film, the studio had to sell off a part of its back lot while the film’s star, Elizabeth Taylor, was hospitalised in London, fighting for her life. Hence, what used to be a thriving film studio was subsequently turned into a sprawling new neighbourhood, called Century City, abounding with hotels, offices and apartment buildings. Cleopatra remains the most expensive production to date by any studio. And even the four Oscars, which the film ended up receiving, didn’t help to boost its box-office receipts.

To stop the bankers from further pulling the rug from beneath the sinking studio, Spyros Skouras was sacked and Zanuck was called back from his self-imposed exile in France. Running the studio in collaboration with his son Richard as his sidekick, they slimmed Twentieth Century Fox down by getting rid of overheads and staff, and nixing unpromising projects. During his second coming at his old studio, Darryl F. Zanuck produced the second world war drama The Longest Day (1962), which became a respectable hit, and prevented the studio from further collapse. The extraordinary financial success of The Sound Of Music in 1965, however, was of little help when a couple of expensive flops at the end of the 1960s (Hello Dolly!, 1970, Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970) threatened once more to ruin the shaky studio, which resulted in the departure of the Zanuck-duo, to be replaced by Alan Ladd Jr.


Under Ladd’s reign Fox regained ground financially, but lost further ground artistically. While the New Hollywood movement was in full swing, Fox had already subscribed to the soon-to-be-popular blockbuster rage, producing escapist fare like The Towering Inferno (1974), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Nine to Five (1980), which were all tremendously successful at the box office, but did little to live up to the studio’s quality pictures of the past.

Alan Ladd left Fox in 1979 to found his own production company. Then, media magnate Marvin Davis acquired the studio only to sell it a mere few years later to another media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, in 1985. The studio’s artistic output has since declined with films like The War Of The Roses (1989), The Thin Red Line (1998) and Moulin Rouge (2001) being the exception rather than the rule, as Murdoch is reaping the profits of light-weight fare like Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997), Ice Age (2002), and I, Robot (2004).

All That Song And Dance

Camp classics: seven iconic performances to warm you up on this chilly winter day:

Liza Minnelli, "Mein Herr", from: Cabaret, Bob Fosse, 1971



Lena Horne, "Stormy Weather", from: Stormy Weather, Andrew L. Stone, 1943



Marilyn Monroe, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", from: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks, 1953



Judy Garland (& Fred Astaire), "We're A Couple Of Swells", from: Easter Parade, Charles Walters, 1948



Rita Hayworth, "Put the Blame On Mame", from: Gilda, Charles Vidor, 1946



Marlene Dietrich, "Hot Voodoo", from: Blonde Venus, Josef von Sternberg, 1932