Customer Reviews

My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a very enjoyable book. I'm so glad Berniece Miracle finally came out with the book with help from daughter Mona. The photos are wonderful, as you watch the transition from Norma Jeane to Marilyn, get to see her wedding photo to Jim Dougherty and hear words of Joe DiMaggio and learn some of the insides of Hollywood as Marilyn shared them with her sister.

Sadly, the book also describes how Berniece was hounded by the press and had a hard time leading a "normal" life. No privacy. I was hoping the book would give more insight into Marilyn's death, but Berniece and Mona are as much in the dark as anyone. Interesting is the denial of any relationship with President John F. Kennedy or brother Bobby. That seems to be a given in most books about Marilyn. However, if you read between the lines here, Marilyn doesn't deny a relationship, she just smiles when Berniece asks and says "they're just boys." There could be a lot Marilyn doesn't share with her sister!

But what comes shining through in this book is how loving and lovable Marilyn was, and how much she was loved by her sister. The idea of a mentally ill mother explains a lot of things, like Marilyn's obvious depression. The sisters not even knowing about each other until Marilyn was 12 and Berniece 19 is sad, but at least they had each other through the rest of Marilyn's life.

This is a lovely book, beautifully written, tragic as it must have been. It shows Marilyn as more of the earthy woman her family knew, which is a refreshing perspective from other Marilyn Monroe biographies!

I recommend this book to anyone vaguely interested in Marilyn Monroe, not merely the die-hard fan. I do not fall into that category, , but am aware of her enduring presence as an icon. This book lived up to its intriguing promise of providing ANOTHER viewpoint about Marilyn – other than the myriad biographies which have been about Marilyn by ‘outsiders’ and those enriching themselves on the proceeds.

This is very much the biography of Norma Jean Baker as she came to be known by her sister.

The picture of ‘private Marilyn’ depicted here does an enormous amount to restore Marilyn’s humanity, her connection with her family and peers, the person behind the impenetrable Goddess Icon that she has become in the decades since her death. This is the uncommodified, unexploited Marilyn, a person who loved and was loved. It’s a great corrective to the hagiographic or shallow tendencies of most Marilyn-abilia and I thoroughly recommend it.

Please buy this book instead of one written by someone who didn't know Marilyn...

Berneice Miracle was Marilyn's half-sister. They shared the same mother, a fitfully employed lab worker at a Hollywood studio during the silent film era. When Marilyn aka Norma Jeane was seven and didn't know Berneice existed, their mother bought a house in Los Angeles, a daring move for a divorced woman at the height of the Great Depression. But Mom became mentally ill a few months later and spent the next fifty years as a revolving door mental patient and old-folks-home resident.

Berneice's father seems to have been a stable man who abandoned the liberal lifestyle of California for the Kentucky of 1926, a different planet. Whoever Marilyn's father was never claimed her as his daughter unless you count a phone call that C. Stanley Gifford supposedly made to her out-of-the-blue a year before she died. Even if Gifford was a dishonest stalker, we still know Marilyn's real father kept quiet, likely out of guilt and sensitivity.

That point brings me to Berneice. While she adds little to her half-sister's previously documented fights with Twentieth Century Fox, Arthur Miller and Patricia Newcomb, she nonetheless shares her sisterly information with sensitivity. Possibly without meaning to, Berneice demonstrates that Marilyn's amazing sensitivity, a requirement for all the artists who share her degree of fame (Billie Holiday, Georgia O'Keeffe, Elvis, Andy Kaufman, etc), ran in the family. The reader experiences Berneice's thin skin in every sentence. The reader witnesses mother Gladys' fragility overpower her, shattering her dream of becoming the new Norma Talmadge (the silent film star after whom Gladys named Norma Jeane). The silence of Marilyn's father echoes with meaning throughout this and other books.

I will close by segueing to the money issue. If you assume Berneice inherited big bucks and she hates everyone who profited from her half-sister's death, then remember the old saying about what you do when you [assume]. The abundant love in Marilyn came through when she made major provisions for Berneice in her will, but the suddenness of her death and the huge debts of her Estate blocked Berneice from getting a penny for fifteen years.

During that time Norman Mailer famously made money from a sloppy investigation into the Kennedy brothers sleeping with and killing Marilyn mixed with a pseudointellectual portrait of his beloved stranger as "the Stradivarius of sex." Mailer's attitude didn't exactly thrill Berneice, but she still wanted very much to know how her sister had died. She had no money to hire a private investigator. To this day Berneice harbors suspicions of foul play. If she, with her genetic sensitivity in the same league as Marilyn's, entertains these thoughts, then a lot more people should. Not just nerdy JFK researchers.

Please buy this book. Berneice, born in 1919 and alive as of this writing, deserves a little money and empathy. As Arthur Miller wrote in "Death Of A Salesman," "attention must be paid to such a [person]." If Berneice's grandchildren are out there reading this, please give her my love. If things sometimes stretch her or you to the breaking point, please remember the love.

This memoir of Berniece Baker Miracle of her half-sister Marilyn Monroe (they had the same mother) is among the most important works ever written on this great star, if only for the insights and information about the young pre-stardom Norma Jeane Baker. Berniece avoided the press for almost 50 years and finally tells her story here and Marilyn fans around the world owe her a debt of thanks for her inside information on Marilyn's early years. And the early photos of Marilyn are so precious. This is a book I am certain will be turned to again and again by Monroe fans, historians, and scholars for many years.

The picture on the cover is worth a thousand words. The two women could be fraternal twins. They look strikingly modern despite their 1950's bikinis and hair dos. Your eye goes right to Marilyn. Her head is up. She is striving to be taller, as she actually is, on a less than level beach. Marilyn looks up and right at you through the camera. Bernice tilts her head slightly down, shyly looking slightly off camera. Both are fresh and young. They appear open and naïve and represent the energy, innocence and can-do attitude of post-war America.

It took a long time for Bernice to emerge from the shadows and tell her sister's story. The Miracle family never made a secondary career or hobby off Marilyn's fame. It is true to form that Bernice chose her daughter to write this and not a highly stylized ghost writer. This seems to be the Miracle's first and only foray into that world.

Reading between the lines of this and other sources, you can see how Marilyn loved Bernice as her only living and reachable kin. Bernice has so successfully dodged the spotlight that in searching the internet, I could find no hint of whether she is still living or not. I did find Mona Rae, who seems to be enjoying her life as a school librarian.

There are no great revelations here, maybe there were in 1994 when it was written. Some of the family photos are great - I love the grandmother's hat! This is a simple telling of the Marilyn story from her sister and niece who loved her very deeply. It is an enjoyable read although it's a sad story.

Although I'm not a diehard fan of Marilyn Monroe, My Sister Marilyn has surely convinced me to watch more of her films. Since her death in the 1960's, numerous reports have surfaced on how she died. The book doesn't surround that particular subject; instead, it shows us the relationship between Marilyn and her sister Berniece. Their bond as sisters was nice to read and they continued to keep in contact up to her death. I highly recommend this memoir to any fan of Marilyn's, or just for the curious reader looking for truth on one of Hollywood's greatest beauties.

I found this book to be a valuable source of unpublished material, both letters and photos, but judging from the recollections of her half-sister, their relationship was not close enough to give any new insights. However the pictures and letters gave me great joy.

This book is beautifully and sensitively written, giving background and thoughts that could only come from the people who knew Marilyn Monroe well and who certainly have nothing to gain by exploiting her. You see a real human being, not some press-agentry creation. Talent must run in the family because Mona Rae has just the right touch for putting a family history into words. For example, the mention of the piano Marilyn owned since childhood, as it pops up here and there in her life, seeming to be a metaphor for her life. Write on!

This book was one of the best I have ever seen. The way it showed her family life, and the pictures, a small amount but breath-taking! I think this book cleared up a lot of false-hoods about her. Also the way they tell the book is very real and interesting.

I love, love, LOVE this book. A must have for any Marilyn fan! A view from the only family member of Marilyn's (besides her mother). A truly unique look into her life! Also, its obvious how much Marilyn adored her sister and niece! Once again, showing how much she longed to be loved. Gives alot of background on Marilyn's parents (well at least the man listed on her birth certficate). It also includes pictures I had never seen before, espically of Norma Jean in her pre-Marilyn days. A delightful read until the very end!!