Orphan. Dropout. Factory girl. Pin up. Star. Marilyn Monroe, born 100 years ago today, lived many lives and went by many names.
In addition to her birth name, Norma Jeane Mortenson, and that unforgettable screen name, the film icon would wear titles like Sweetheart of the Month, Artichoke Queen, Miss Cheesecake of the Year and Girl Most Likely to Thaw Alaska throughout her life.
But who was Marilyn Monroe, really? One story – ditsy, distant, too earnest, an unsocialised puppy of a woman – contradicts another – dark and serious, a secret intellectual who scrawled poems on hotel stationary.
One Photoplay article from 1952 describes her as ‘sexual because she had no female friends to tell her when to put it away’. Meanwhile, a new piece in The Guardian, in celebration of her 100th birthday, reveals Marilyn to be a real ‘girl’s girl’, highlighting her female friendships with starlets and models like Jane Russell and Amy Greene.
Marilyn, it seems, was just as slippery in life as she remains in death. However, almost every account of the long-gone star is vehement about one thing: She loved to read. In 1949, she opened her first charge account, not at a clothier or a diners club, but at a California bookshop called Martindale’s. By the end of her life, she had amassed a personal library of over 400 books.
She audited classes at UCLA in Literature and Renaissance Art and from hotels to film set trailers to villas, mansions and New York apartments, you could always find a book on her nightstand. On the night Marilyn died, the book in question was supposedly The Art of Loving by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm.
And so, on this first day of June, and the first day of Marilyn’s 100th year, let’s dive into one (or 10) of these books that explore the inner-life of one of the brightest, blondest, most elusive women to ever grace our screens.
Marilyn And Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe by Gail Crowther
Timed perfectly for Marilyn’s 100th birthday, this new book is a deeply-researched exploration into the star’s personal collection of books and the literary life she lived when the cameras weren’t around. From drinks with Christopher Isherwood to liaising with Edith Sitwell at the Sunset Tower Hotel, she loved literature. A high school dropout, Marilyn doggedly pursued self-education throughout her life, and here, finally we get to meet Marilyn: the Mind, not Marilyn: the Body.
Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe
Edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment, this collection is the closest we could possibly get to reading Marilyn’s diary. For the real history buffs out there, this intimate book brings together handwritten notebooks, notes, letters and stray poems written by Norma Jeane’s own hand.
Marilyn: Norma Jeane by Gloria Steinem
Published in 1986, this book is a real icon-meet-icon situation. Fresh off the tidal wave that was the Women’s Liberation Movement, feminist legend Gloria Steinem offers up a rich biography of Marilyn Monroe that characterises the star as a tortured artist and thinker, not just the ‘tits-and-ass cutie’ that many deemed her to be in her lifetime. This book helped pave the way for a new Marilyn fandom – one more interested in her inner life than her outer curves.
My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe by Berniece Baker Miracle
Every photographer, director and dressmaker that entered Marilyn’s orbit has likely written a book about the star, but Marilyn’s family life is often missing from these glitzy portraits. Published in 1994, My Sister Marilyn sees Marilyn’s half-sister, the product of her mother’s first marriage at age 14, reveal unmissable personal details about their relationship and Marilyn’s life pre-stardom. This is no distant relative trying to cash in on the legacy either; Berniece spoke to her sister just days before her death, and was even the one to choose her casket and funeral dress.
My Story by Marilyn Monroe (with Ben Hecht)
This blazing autobiography wasn’t published until over a decade after Marilyn’s death and in it we get a glimpse of how this whirlwind life was felt from the driver’s seat. Alongside writer Ben Hecht, Marilyn takes us from her not-so sunny childhood in Los Angeles to her marriage to baseball star Joe DiMaggio, and dozens of telling passages in between – the most chilling of all being the star’s portrait of herself as ‘the kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand’.
MM Personal – From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe by Lois Banner
As a female historian, Lois Banner’s account of Marilyn’s material life reads strikingly different from the accounts of Hollywood insiders, personal friends and auteur novelists. Her methodology is different too. Far from being just another recitation of Marilyn’s biography, this book reproduces documents, photos, letters and other ephemera found in Marilyn’s personal file cabinets. If you want to know just how involved Marilyn was in the construction of her public persona, or how exactly she felt about her millions of fan letters, this is the book for you.
Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates
Forget the Netflix adaptation starring Ana de Armas. This 768-page epic must be experienced in its fullest form. Written in first-person, this book is a fictionalised retelling of Marilyn’s life, written in sharp, arching prose that taps into the heart of what sexual exploitation does to a woman. Leave your biographical purity at the door, and follow Oates through the decades to see the unravelling of a star in real time.
Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy by Elizabeth Winder
So much of the literature about Marilyn’s life focuses on her depression, drug addiction and eventual suicide, but this record-scratch moment from Elizabeth Winder sets up on a different path. For a brief moment in 1954, Marilyn was not only happy, but successful. This portrait of Marilyn’s year in New York City shows her getting lost in art, scouring bookshelves at the Strand and falling in love with the playwright Arthur Miller. This snapshot of just one chapter in Marilyn’s life will change the way you see the star.
Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon by Charles Casillo
This 2018 biography of Marilyn is the gold standard. Based on new research and fresh interviews with people who knew the star best, Charles Casillo takes us up to the iconic blonde’s final days, revealing encounters Marilyn had at a party just days before her death, and how her despair was an open secret in Hollywood. Elizabeth Taylor even tried to reach out and help, despite the bitter rivalry between the two.
Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold
Stories about women written by women just hit different. The same is true of photographs. In 1952, Eve Arnold went on assignment to photograph Marilyn Monroe for Esquire Magazine, making her the only woman to ever produce in-depth photographs of the actress. Over the next 10 years, the two women built a deep friendship. This photo book, which includes a detailed biography written by Arnold, is a must-read for anyone interested in the cultivation of the ‘female gaze’ in art – and in Marilyn myth-making.