Customer Reviews

Conversations With Marilyn

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author knew Marilyn and liked her very much. He first met her during the filming of "The Misfits." Later, he would meet her in a NYC bar and discuss all types of subjects, from MM's lovers, her views on civil rights, her compassion and kindness towards her fans, her future, her secret affair with a famous politician (she didn't reveal the name). This is one of the best books ever written about MM because the English author is careful to remain objective. This is NOT a kiss and tell biography and that makes it more valuable to the MM fan. Don't miss this one!

I agree with Kyle Wagner. I just finished this book last night and I was glad to have read it. I've been a huge fan of hers for the past 8 or so years, and I've never come across it. I like the fact that this was closer to the end of her life when she wasn't trying so hard with journalists. It seems like in her earlier days she tried to hard to fit the "Marilyn" type she had created. This book shows more of her, Norma Jean.
I also found it cute and interesting how he played hard to get with her, not trying to talk to her.
After so many years of being a fan, it's nice to read something about her. I now feel like I know her and all her insecurities, emotions, and even the joking side of her.
I have long known that she was never the "dumb blonde" that was portrayed on screen and often found myself having to defend her to friends and family. At least this book gives me proof.
I highly recommend this book and feel it is a most to any Marilyn Monore fan.

This book caught my eye in a used book store, and after eenie-meenie-mynie-moeing it and two other books... I walked out with Mr. Weatherby's book, and I'm so glad I did. I read it very quickly over two mornings, and was astonished at how factual and real it seemed to be.

After being hired by The London Observer to cover the making of "The Misfits", W. J. Weatherby strikes up an unlikely acquaintance with Marilyn. I suggest you read the book to discover how this came about - it was a fun & delicious little "courtship" that took place between the two. (Marilyn initially refusing interviews and Weatherby, upon hearing this, spoke with all cast members - very visibly - but Marilyn.) In time the two shared occasional telephone calls, and conversations that took place mostly in an anonymous bar on 8th avenue in NYC.

In the pages of this book are glimpses of the real person who inhabited the character of Marilyn Monroe. ("Marilyn" was a creation of the studios, and Norma Jean.) In one fascinating account after another we find out little every day things about MM (or Norma Jean): how she was almost supernaturally able to turn "Marilyn" on and off as though by flicking a switch. Sometimes it's fun for her to evoke "Her", and sometimes she prefers to be skillfully anonymous.

What makes this book even more fascinating to me is that the author was also following Integration in the South at the time, and was dating a black woman with whom he discussed his conversations with Marilyn. Likewise with Marilyn he discussed the subject of Integration. I'd never thought about Marilyn as being, one of the very few "Stars" that black people could identify with (at the time) but all parties speak candidly on this subject.

This is a well written and fascinating book that resonates as true to me. It makes me not want to read other sensational books about dear Marilyn, and also makes me think in my heart that her death was indeed the (possibly) accidental cause of a drug over-dose. And that behind this sensationalized creature there lived a woman-girl who read books, drank, and suffered from every day dilemmas like anyone else.

Very Highly Recommended.

First, let me say that I am not a die-hard Marilyn Monroe fan. I have scanned over the other reviews (all rated 5-stars), and I have to disclose that I have not read a lot about her. So coming from that perspective, I do not have the breadth of comparisons that other reviewers seem to have about Monroe related volumes.

In and of itself, I found "Conversations With Marilyn" to be a curious, sometimes odd, and slightly meandering volume. Weatherby met Monroe while covering the filming of "The Misfits" and they had several extensive conversations following the film's shooting, with the understanding that Weatherby would not use the material at the present time. Before the in-depth interactions with Monroe actually begin in the second half of the book, Weatherby discusses conversations he had with Clark Gable (Monroe's co-star in "The Misfits"), Arthur Miller (Monroe's husband and "Misfits" screenwriter), Lee Strasberg, Paula Strasberg, and Clifford Odets.

Monroe's conversations with Weatherby range from literature to the civil rights movement. The main underpinnings of the conversations are Monroe's efforts to find herself, to reconcile her dramatic ambitions with that of her movie star/sex symbol realities. Monroe emerges as a likable, intelligent, and multi-faceted individual. The book sheds no new light on her reported connections with the Kennedys, but only underscores the mysteries that comprised the last year of her life, and the unanswered questions about her death.

I just finished this book and have always wanted to get my hands on it and read about the conversations of Marilyn with someone that she to a very large extent trusted with casual encounters and conversations of the things going on in her life and in the countr at the time. It was heart warming and reassuring to know that beneth the movie star was a sensitive, sweet, angry, moody woman, in other words a real human being. As her make up artist Whitey once said of her, "She was the only one of them that was human." And after reading this she really was, it makes me wonder just what she could have done had she lived on.
This is a great addition to anyone that is as big a fan as i am to your Monroe Library.

This book really lets you see the real person. The insecure, sweet woman we all love. I would reccamend this book very much