An exhaustive portrait of Marilyn Monroe draws on previously unavailable sources and intimate papers to chronicle her private life, rise to movie stardom, marriages and lovers, and shocking death. Reprint.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
This is a book that wound up teaching me a great deal about Hollywood, the social history of California, the movie business, the trials of female actors in American show business and the life of a woman who has been so mythologized that often the real woman is obscured from actual view. (Erica Jong Washington Post Book World )
Spoto has given Monroe the treatment she deserves. At last she emerges not as a goddess but as a human being in this extraordinary volume. (London Daily Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Spoto has given Monroe the treatment she deserves. At last she emerges not as a goddess but as a human being in this extraordinary volume. (London Daily Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
About the Author
Donald Spoto is the author of Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich, Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, Diana: The Last Year, The Hidden Jesus: A New Life, and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Accurate, detailed biography.,
By "zmart4ever" (san marcos, ca United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (Paperback)
Donald Spoto bases this book on the facts...not speculations and unseen sources. This is a very detailed account of Marilyn's Life,from the early years spent as a starlet thru her marriages...relationships with famous photographers and acting coaches thru ordinary people...Marilyn's last days are realistically brought back to Life with a plausible explanation of what really happened the night she died. One of the best parts of the book is the last chapter "Aftermath: the great deception", where Donald Spoto adresses all the tabloid biographies that sensationalize marilyn's death...the theories and speculations about her involvement with the Kennedys and the mafia and so called "best friends".... Such as Robert Slatzer and jeanne carmen, to name the worst offenders among them. I have read all the mayor Biographies on Marilyn and this one for me comes closest to what the truth might be about what happened to marilyn.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't read this if you dislike facts.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (Mass Market Paperback)
I've been reading MM books for a couple of decades now and I've become disgusted by the amount of sheer garbage that has been printed about this woman. What a relief to read a well-written book based on facts instead lies, rumors, and prurient gossip. Spoto discredits the absurd "Kennedy murder" theory and MM's supposed connection to "the Mob." Basically, he discredits all the trash that has become accepted as fact about MM, including Robert Slatzer's idiotic claim to be her husband. What I liked best about this book was its affectionate attitude toward its subject and its reliance on what can reasonably be determined to be true, as opposed to repeating scurrilous old rumors and wild gossip. Of course, it's the dirt that sells these days, which is why the more garbage-oriented books about MM sell better.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The truth. Finally.,
By "karilynx" (in Oz, of course) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (Paperback)
Donald Spoto must have done a lot of hard work to uncover all this information about Marilyn. In this extensive biography (the best I've read) we learn things that maybe we'd never heard about before.And, by interviewing people close to Marilyn such as Milton H. Greene and Inez Nelson (?), by reading papers from Marilyn to Lee/Paula Strasberg, Pat Newcomb, and others influential in her life, DS gives us further insight into the life of this beautiful but misunderstood immortal screen goddess. We also learn the truth about her death. No, Marilyn was not killed by the Kennedys. (Both Bobby and John had alibis, and the information DS presents show no reason why they would want to assassinate her anyway.) And from what DS says, Marilyn was planning to remarry Joe DiMaggio and to her friends it didn't seem that she was planning to kill herself. His hypothesis is that her suicide may have been accidental, after being fed all those barbituates by different people through all the years, and Dr. Ralph Greenson and her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, may have had a hand in it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned so much from it!
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