Marilyn Monroe (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On January 16, 1951, a black Lincoln convertible pulled into the driveway at 2000 Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills..." (more)
Key Phrases: new studio contract, studio attorney, dramatic coach, New York, Marilyn Monroe, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This extraordinarily thoughtful book by Barbara Leaming, a literary star among movie-star biographers, offers the last thing you'd expect in a book on Marilyn Monroe: new information from verifiable sources. Sure, lots of the tragedy is familiar: an abused, confused girl from an orphanage with a mother in a madhouse rises from sexual party favor for homely showbiz men to the movie superstar who pushes them around, until she crashes, a victim of self-loathing and drug addiction.

The thing about a tragedy is that its heroine isn't a victim--she's responsible for her fate. Leaming does scholarly spadework, digging up hard facts from sources like UCLA's 20th Century Fox collection and the diary-like first drafts of Arthur Miller's semiautobiographical work, and she makes sense of Monroe's motives. She even apparently solves Monroe's suicide with clues from the star's psychiatrist's letters in the Anna Freud collection. Her last overdose may have happened just because her shrink went to dinner with his wife and she felt abandoned.

But until pills killed her, Monroe wasn't a candle in the wind. She burned with ambition and knew how to craft a persona and play power games--with moguls and with the commie-busters hounding her husband Miller. Leaming plausibly analyzes the Miller-Monroe-Elia Kazan love/hate triangle, sizes up the Kennedy connection, busts her acting coach Lee Strasberg as "chillingly mercenary," and deftly shows just how her life entangled her art, film by film.

This book has a woman's touch: it's a work of sharp intellect and emotional insight unclouded by lust or star worship. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

Thirty-six years after Marilyn Monroe's death (at the age of 36), Leaming, prolific celebrity biographer, picks through the bones and neuroses of the ultimate Hollywood icon. More than 200 books have been written on the subject; only a few biographies (namely, Donald Spoto's revisionist Marilyn Monroe: The Biography) have managed to humanize the fragile actress, who has long since been subsumed by her own mystique. Leaming's relentlessly morose and stand-offish portrait, by contrast, places Monroe on a downward spiral from birth. Beginning in 1951, the book backtracks briefly, skimming over her childhood, early marriage, status on the party-girl circuit and early screen debut. Relying on letters, memos, other biographies and a paper trail from Twentieth Century-Fox, Leaming relays the precise dates when Monroe signed contracts, called in sick, filmed for half a day, etc. It's an approach that does little to explain Monroe's dynamc screen presence, her warmth and charm. The absence of new interviews here is most noticeable in passages detailing Monroe's marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. Both husbands remain enigmas on the page. However, secondary characters (such as Lee and Paula Strasberg and longtime agent Charles Feldman) are often vividly etched. If Monroe enjoyed any good friendships or happy experiences making films, they're not presented here. Leaming's real contribution is the coverage of the HUAC blacklisting trials and its effects on the men in Monroe's life. As interesting as these details may be, however, they overwhelm the book and, even worse, shove Marilyn from the spotlight. 32 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (October 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517702606
• ISBN-13: 978-0517702604
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #872,656 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No one respected Marilyn,, July 16, 2001

By	V. VanCamp "lovesbookslovesmusic" (Ithaca, New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Marilyn Monroe (Paperback)

least of all Marilyn! Here was a sad and tragic woman who just wanted to be loved, but even when she was loved, she was unable to believe it or accept it. This book is so sad and heartbreaking. It left me wanting to comfort the little girl inside Marilyn Monroe. She longed for respect, but also did not believe she deserved it. Marilyn should have had therapy when she was a young girl. By the time she was in therapy, it was too little, to late.

This book is fascinating. I loved that Barbara Leaming gave us a lot of details, because it helped me to really get a feeling for Marilyn and her life. I also enjoyed reading about other people such as Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, Elia Kazan and Lee & Paula Strasberg. (To name just a few!)This book gives you a very clear picture of Hollywood and all of its selfish, greedy and self-oriented people.

This book makes me feel that Marilyn did not get a fair shake in this world. It is also apparent, though that Marilyn made some big mistakes that hurt her badly. She was a lost girl and she needed help and guidance that she never really got. Most of the people she received 'help' from had their own agendas and so their 'help' focused more on them than it did Marilyn. There was a huge part of Marilyn that never grew up. She was fragile and was unable to stand the harshness of this world, and so, she self-destructed.

Excellent book - sad book - intriguing book - absolutely worth reading!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Saddest book I've ever read, February 2, 2000

By	Leon M. Bodevin "Do right and fear no man" (Lemoore, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's so tragic to see Monroe fall into the self-destructive behavior she does at the end of her life. She looks like a zombie in the last pictures, completely devoid of the joy, drive, and energy that made her so beautiful before barbituates and alcohol destroyed it all. I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing I could do to help her. The way Arthur Miller completely ignored her descent is appalling. Monroe's marriage to Joe was not good by any means but at least DiMaggio didn't play a fiddle as Rome burned like Miller seems to have done. Miller acts selfishly and cowardly. The way everybody used her (especially Natasha, the Strasbergs, and Miller) to advance their own careers is shocking. Lee Strasberg seems to think it was his God-given right to mercilessly blackmail money from Monroe's production company. This is a sad tale indeed.

Oh yeah and the book. I agree with the reviewer who said that Leaming doesn't sufficiently cover her marriage to DiMaggio. She doesn't. One other criticism: Leaming could have cut out some of the Freudian interpretations of Monroe's youth. It got a bit much in the first half of the book. But overall, this bio is well put together and very coherent. It's just so doggone sad.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointing., July 14, 2003

By	Elizabeth Roberts-Zibbel (bowling green ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Marilyn Monroe (Paperback)

Don't buy this biography of Marilyn Monroe if you are at all curious about her thoughts and feelings, details of her personal life, or her mysterious death. However, if you want to read hundreds of pages all about Marilyn's battles with 20th Century Fox studios, her dissolved partnership with Milton Greene, and how she spent her money, then this is the book for you. Leaming's primary source was Marilyn's extensive file at Fox, which leads to an extremely disappointing and impersonal look at a dynamic icon. I recommend _Legend_ by Fred Lawrence Guiles instead, though non-conspiracy fans tend to prefer the Donald Spoto biography. Either is preferable to this one.