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The Unabridged Marilyn: Her Life from A to Z

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Want to find out what Marilyn's favorite colour was? Or how many movies she appeared in? What foods she ate? Who Marilyn's favorite Powerpuff Girl was? Chances are one'll find three of the four and much much more in The Unabridged Marilyn A-Z, which is an encyclopedia, a Marilyn matrix at one's fingertips.

The entry featuring lists are painstakingly detailed, thanks to the duo of Randall Riese and Neal Hitchens. Firsts, for example, lists that her first LIFE cover was the April 1952 one, that her first date was Jim Dougherty, later to become her first husband, or that her first screen test was on 19 July 1946.

Other entries range from individual movies, people who played parts in her life, be they crucial, trivial, or peripheral, such as photographers, directors, and other performers. For example, there's a short entry on Audrey Hepburn because the part of Breakfast At Tiffany's Holly Golightly was originally written by Truman Capote with MM in mind. Selected movie reviews, the coroner's report, LAPD police report, list of quotes, comprise other entries.

Peppered throughout the books are Marilyn related trivia questions, such as what plant she knocked over in The Seven Year Itch.

However, this book came out in 1987, and since that time, countless other books have been written on Marilyn, plus certain people, such as Yves Montand, Joe DiMaggio, and Susan Strasberg, have passed away. Earlier books have probably gone out-of-print as well. And of course, she finally got her own postage stamp in the U.S. A lot can indeed change in fifteen years.

Books like these serves as a focal point for devoted fans or mere students of the subject, but others may find something like this to be somewhat indulgent and exploitative. Marilyn, Elvis, James Dean, and John Wayne are probably a few who have had these kind of reference books written about them.

If you want to write a fictional work on Marilyn, find out all sorts of trivia on her, or just plain want to know about her, AND, you don't care that this came out in the late 1980's, this is a good place to start. Who knows, maybe you'll start feeling blonde all over.