Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ENGROSSING AND INSIGHTFUL, March 23, 2007
This book explores the behind-the-scenes Marilyn Monroe, the real person. Lonely, desperate, emotionally tortured and in constant physical and psychologial pain. John Gilmore was acquainted with Marilyn for over a decade in Hollywod and in New York, and the author lays bare the exact attraction of these two individuals, both of the same ilk, love-deprived Hollywood kids that are better described as emotional castaways. Gilmore is a fine, intense writer, who probes his subject to its absolute depth. We arrive at a painful portrait of the highly complex personality that was Marilyn, the antithesis of the "dumb blonde" roles thrust upon her under a "slave" contract. Marilyn emerges so special and so precious, so lost and exploited, that her accidental death by an overdose comes as an almost (and this is painful to say) 'blessing'.
With a razor clarity familiar to Gilmore fans, the author details Marilyn's tragic detour from happiness and self-fulfillment. Remarkable depth, insight, originality and daring is found on every page as we are at last introduced to the human being hidden behind the most famous image in the world. This book slashes apart the "conspiracy theories" as exploitive, fast-buck schemes, and shows how and why they came about. Most important, this book is about Marilyn, the person no one could ever really know without having been there. A remarkable, engaging read that at the same time proves to be an emotional experience.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raw and Vulnerable: An Intimate view on Marilyn Monroe, March 22, 2007
Fans of John Gilmore's work will delight in this fantastic new book on Marilyn Monroe. John brings to the reader a raw, yet vulnerable look at Marilyn, and of himself, in this intimate read. And those unfamiliar with Mr. Gilmore's work (difficult as it would be to believe) will find themselves instant fans.
This book flows easily in the readers hands and brings to life a new Marilyn, one long lost in the Hollywood shuffle of glamour and glitz. Gilmore takes you back to the time and days of Marilyn's early years with personal experience into her life both in reflection of his own and from personal encounters over a 10 year span. Filled with rare photos and even rarer interviews this book will keep you captivated from beginning to end.
Long gone has the real person behind Marilyn Monroe been, but now John Gilmore, with all his talents as one of the most gifted writers of the 21st Century, brings back to us, the readers and the fans, Marilyn Monroe the person, the woman, the human being.
I highly recommend this read to those who are a fan of Marilyn Monroe or those who are a fan of Mr. Gilmore's work. Neither will be disappointed.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Skimming Marilyn Monroe, August 20, 2007
I was hesitant to buy this , as the title of this book about one of the most continuously exploited beings who ever lived seemed faintly suggestive of vulgar possibilities, but bought it I did. I started out not liking it, then I kind of liked it, I really wanted to.... but then I decided that overall I wasn't at all crazy about it. I know little about John Gilmore except that his name is unknown to most, he wrote a fairly successful book about the famous Black Dahlia murder, and he was seemingly on the periphery of old 1950's Hollywood. He may very well have known James Dean intimately and he may very well be one of those kooks who has repeated his stories so many times that now he himself believes them. At the most, he is a man who admittedly met Marilyn Monroe half a dozen times and therefore wrote a book about her. There are things in this book that even I as an avid and lifelong M.M. student hadn't heard before, and rare photos that I have never seen. And his quotes re: M.M. from other people who knew her in New York and Hollywood are sometimes interesting and insightful, if being second hand rememberences. But, though this rememberance is overall a sympathetic portrait, my problem with this book, other than that he didn't really "know" Marilyn at all, is that it presents only a Marilyn so inarticulate and intellectually crippled as to being rendered almost mute. It has been established that M.M. was an extremely insecure person who spent her short life trying to overcome the emotional scars of her early life. But, as many newsclips , interviews, and rememberences of others through the years show, she was often confident, articulate, self aware, and objective about her "image" and herself during her lifetime, and, undoubtedly, a huge troubled screw up much of her life as well (gee, just like a "real" human being...). To me, this rememberence presents only the troubled, insecure creature. This is not the Marilyn who singlehandidly reunited the estranged Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan in full view of an Actors Studio benefit. Who wittily quipped "I'm the same person, it's just a different suit.." to the interviewer who queried M.M. on what she interpreted as a more "refined" M.M. style. Not the Marilyn about whom photographer Elliott Erwitt said "she was a very bright person...very rarely does one meet a truly witty woman. Marilyn Monroe was one." And to the interviewer who posed the question "What is your nightmare", she replied "The H bomb, what's yours?".. or to another interviewer who asked "How does it feel to be Marilyn Monroe?" she replied "Well...how does it feel to be yourself?" No, there is no sign here of the Marilyn who bravely pursued self growth and awareness much of her entire life, in the face of overwhelming odds and extreme and very public preconceived prejudices . And while this very well may be the only view of Marilyn that Mr. Gilmore may have been exposed to in his six brief encounters with her, I simply didn't find it interesting enough to warrant having purchased the book. It abruptly ends with what everyone already knows, of course, her death...with Mr. Gilmore informing us what Marilyn was thinking in her final moments.."she wondered if she was dying..." "she knew there was a kind of electrical impulse to do with the heart that was governed by nature..." I am curious as to how he knows this. Ultimately, though I think the author attempted to present a sympatetic portrait, it is simply too one sided and at best limited to the 50 year old rememberences of one who never really knew the person. It has all the feel of one attempting to make a whole cloth out of some very spare pieces of fabric, and the positive and glowing reviews of this book have all the feel of p.r. blurbs supplied by acquaintances. I would not bother buying it if I had it to do over again. But....as always, our dearest Marilyn oddly transcends all the facts, myths, lies,...and remains Hollywoods most beautiful, supernatural, legendary , most adored citizen and film icon, and her ghost still now and probably will forever haunt the early morning misty streets of that largely imaginary town, as well as the minds of more people than almost anyone else ever in existance. That is her triumph.
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