Marilyn!!! - 11 Classic Movies Reviewed

There are not many celebrities dead or alive more iconic than screen star Marilyn Monroe.  Elvis, Garbo, Bogart, Houdini, Michael Jackson, Muhammed Ali, maybe Madonna, and who else? Marilyn was stunningly sexy and attractive, controversial in her personal life, and possessed of that rare cinematic quality called “IT.”  

In the process of reading Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel Blonde recently - a 700+ page quasi-biographical tome about a fictional character named Norma Jeane Baker aka Marilyn Monroe -  “inspired” by a true story as they say nowadays – I became, not for the first time, fascinated by MM’s story:  the person, the actress and the myth; and so, decided to watch some of the key movies that formed the career of this 1950s megastar. I owed it to myself to fill in the gaps, right? So, over the next couple of weeks, the wife and I did just that. We watched eleven MM movies, all of which are available on most streaming services (except, as usual, not on Netflix).  Most (not all) are well worth a visit – or revisit.  

As a public service, I’ll describe and provide a mini-review of each below, along with my recommendations.

For those under, oh let’s say 60, who may have heard of Marilyn Monroe, may have seen the Warhol silkscreens, appreciated Elton John’s homage to her – the original 1973 Candle In the Wind, and so on, but are not of the generation that grew up knowing her story, Marilyn was THE American pin-up girl of the late 1940s and early 1950s, THE American cinema sex goddess of the 50s and early 60s, the epitome of the male gaze during those times, and paradoxically perhaps the most famous breaker of that era’s sexual taboos.  Her 1962 suicide symbolized to many the impossible contradictions and constraints imposed by Hollywood, the media, and the moral police on mid-century women. 

Born Norma Jean Baker in 1926 to a mentally ill mother, father unknown,  she became a virtual orphan, abandoned, raised by a succession of orphanages and foster families (at one of which she was molested at the age of ten) until she was married off at age 16 to a neighbor boy five years her senior to avoid a return to the orphanage. Shy, alone, unloved, needy, an insecure stutterer; she was also attractive, ambitious, something of a perfectionist, and ultimately a damned good actress. Determined to succeed, she used sex to meet increasingly influential men as a path up the ladder and hopefully as a pathway to love. Initially cast as a sexy blonde one-dimensional caricature, then as an uneducated but canny blonde looker twisting gobsmacked male admirers around her fingers, Marilyn Monroe made some of the most popular, financially successful movies of the 1950s,. Late in her career, Marilyn (hereafter, MM) was recognized as a solid actress, first for her considerable comic talent and eventually, though relatively briefly, for her dramatic abilities.  Yet, MM suffered terrible stage fright along with anxiety and insomnia, which lead to an increasing reliance on barbiturates (to sleep) amphetamines (to stay awake) and alcohol (to forget).

Throughout her career, particularly in the early films but revisited as late as Some Like it Hot in 1959, her character was set up as the epitome of the predominant male fantasy: a naïve, sexually available, blonde, child-woman knockout. She performed a significant role in refining this image, but it was initially fashioned by Hollywood men and tailored to the male gaze. It was both a reason for her success and a major contributor to her discontent, her mental instability and eventually her overdose death at age 36.

"I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it be sex than some other things they've got symbols of."  — MM in an interview for Life magazine shortly before her death.

The Movies (in chronological order of release date): 

I’m going to start my reviews not with MM’s first film appearance, but with the first significant picture in which she got noticed.  That would be The Asphalt Jungle, released in 1950.

1 The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – Recommended – This is the movie in which MM first really got noticed. It’s quite a good period movie in its own right, directed by John Huston, about a big-time jewelry heist which is almost successful but eventually and dramatically unravels in the aftermath for a variety of reasons. It stars Sam Jaffe as the mastermind, Sterling Hayden as the muscle, Jean Hagen as Sterling’s girl (named “Doll”), Louis Emmerich as an eminent but corrupt lawyer – who agrees to finance the caper. MM has a supporting role as Emmerich’s blonde mistress, Angela.  Her screen-time is fairly small – and I don’t believe she was officially credited - but she’s very noticeable. This is the one where people came out of the screening, saying “Who was that Blonde?” 

  

 2 Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) – Recommended – This is a little B movie thriller, but it’s quite watchable and is, I think, the first feature in which MM has the lead, overshadowing her famous co-star Richard Widmark in the process. It also features 21-year-old Anne Bancroft in her film debut, as the saloon singer who dumps Widmark’s airline pilot for being too shallow. MM is a troubled young woman named “Nell” who gets a job at a hotel babysitting a 9-year-old kid (courtesy of her Uncle Eddie [veteran character actor Elisha Cook Jr.]), while her parents attend an awards dinner downstairs. And MM is terrific as someone we and Widmark (who, naturally, is initially attracted to her) gradually realize is more than a little nutty – and dangerous.

3 Monkey Business (1952) – Not recommended – This movie – not to be confused with the classic Marx Brothers romp of the same name from 1931 - has Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers as a happily married middle aged couple, with Grant,not for the first time, playing an absent minded, easily befuddled scientist, called Barnaby Fulton here.  Fulton has been working on a formula for an elixir that will “cure” aging, testing it out on a lab chimp called Esther. When Esther starts acting .. er .. childish, Dr Fulton tries the formula on himself and, you guessed it, starts acting giddy like a hyped-up teenager. (Grant was in his late 40s at the time.) He takes off with the boss’s hot blonde secretary, buys a cool MG roadster, drives crazily fast, goes ice skating, etc. The secretary, of course, is MM, who’s not very competent and was hired for her looks alone (“Anyone can type”, explains the boss, Mr Oxley (Charles Coburn, always excellent). For me, the story seemed tired, too predictable and not very funny – despite a slate of usually very good writers. It does have a few some good lines, though. Perhaps the best is when Mrs Fulton (Rogers) calls MM’s character “a pin-up girl.” Grant replies, “But half infant”, and she retorts, “Not the half that shows”. MM, as usual, is the best thing about every scene she’s in.

4 Niagara (1953) – Recommended – Another thriller but in a more noir style, this one set at Niagara Falls, principally at a quaint mid-century motel where Jean Peters and Max Showalter show up for their belated honeymoon. This is where they meet the sexy blonde bombshell “Rose” (MM) and George, her weak cuckolded husband (Joseph Cotton). Rose, it turns out has plans to ditch her man Double Indemnity-style. [Hopefully you’ll understand the reference, but if you haven’t seen Double Indemnity (1944), with Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G Robinson, that’s another must-see classic.]  MM is terrific as a bad person. 1953 was a great year for her, career-wise – she starred in three successful movies, this being the first. Niagara also features exciting photography of the great falls. Yes, it’s about 15 minutes too long, so as to feature an unnecessary yet action-packed ending, but still worth it. Showalter is mildly annoying; the other lead actors are all good. It is particularly interesting to see Cotton as a distraught cuckold.  

 

The remaining 7 reviews are available in Part 2 of Marilyn!!!  These include Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,  Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch and Bus Stop. To get there, click HERE.