Don't cry
I hold you and rock you to sleep
Hush hush
I'm pretending now
I'm not your mother who died"
Death made Marilyn Monroe a legend, more maddening, elusive and mystifying than any other Hollywoood star in filmdom's history. Death guaranteed that Marilyn Monroe would live on, more famous and beloved in death than she was in life. She has been dead for over 40 years now, but so far no-one has learned how to say goodbye to the fragile blonde who lived the hollywood dream - and was destroyed by it.
They have kept her memory alive for over 40 years and they could do so for atleast another 40. Because today the name Marilyn Monroe sells their product: newspapers, magazines, or books. More books have in fact been published on Marilyn Monroe than on any other movie star. The media hype has helped to spawn quite an industry in reproduction Marilyn Monroe collectibles. Card shops now display the latest in Monroe greeting cards and postcards, while record stores feature new releases of compact discs of Marilyn. Galleries and poster shops cover their walls with lifesize Monroe pin-ups and reproduction posters from her most famous movies.
Dads and granddads browse but seldom buy the memories of the pin-up girl of their youth. Sales are more often made to young women. They identify strongly with the legend of Marilyn Monroe. She is one of their idols. When asked why they like her, they will invaribly say "she's beautiful"
All this Monroe mania could lead people to believe she was the most popular star in history of motion pictures. However, on examination, the magazines and newspapers from her screen heyday of the 1950's tell another story. No denying that Marilyn Monroe then recieved more publicity than anyone else in pictures - with the possible exception of Elizabeth Taylor!
Men infact preferred Janet Leigh or Esther Williams to Marilyn Monroe. Remember Marilyn's series of pin-ups from "The Seven Year Itch". where she stood over an air vent with her skirt billowing in the breeze? The publicity spinoff from those pinups did not make her the number one movie star of 1955. Nor was Marilyn the favourite blonde with picturegoers that year. Marilyn was however, a top ten star three times. Two of her listings were consecutive; in 1953, and again in 1954. She returned to fold in 1956. But Marilyn never ranked higher than fifth place. Doris Day was the number one star 4 times and Betty Grable was a top ten box office attraction for an unbroken decade; a record no other female star has either matched or beaten.
Marilyn Monroe continues to wield a powerful influence - a mystique and enigma - that is even more powerful now than it was during her life. Marilyn has an image of beauty, talent, and sensuality that is unsurpassed. The truth is Marilyn Monroe was always a complex conundrum. Running away from the reality of being Norma Jean, she succeeded only in arriving in the unreality of being marilyn. So why should we miss her so much?
It should be easy to make another Marilyn - a small, blonde girl with a sweet face. There should be thousands of them. They should come from all over the world. But they don't and they never will.
Decades after her death, people still write about her, speculate about her and feel a sense of loss because, quite simply, Marilyn Monroe was special. The sad thing is that few realised it when she was alive. And sadder still is neither did she.
...But for those of us who continue to remember Marilyn Monroe, her mental problems are overlooked in favour of the legend of the foster home kid who beacme Hollywood's screen goddess and was ultimately killed by the system that created her. She has been dead for over 40 years, but we're still saying goodbye.
THE DEATH OF MARILYN..... Sometime after 10 pm. on August 4,1962, Marilyn Monroe slipped into a coma caused by an overdose of sleeping pills. She would never regain consciousness.
Shortly after she was discovered, a bizzare set of activities took place in her Brentwood home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. Some items were allegedly removed, including a diary and an incriminating note which could have far-reaching implications, if discovered. The order for their removal was believed to have come from someone in the White House, in an attempt to prevent a scandal from toppling the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
Marilyn's body was discovered by live-in house keeper Eunice Murray, there has been speculation that she may have known more than was ever divulged. Interestingly, Murray attemped to cash a $200 check made out to her by Monroe several days after Marilyn's death. The bank declined to pay Murray cause by then Marilyn was publically known to be deceased. Exactly how and when Marilyn Monroe died sparked a debate that would last more than 40 years and generate many theories, including that of murder. Accidental overdose seems more likely considering Marilyn had a knowledge of many drugs and their implications.
THE LEGEND.....
Over Forty years after her death..Marilyn Monroe still fascinates. She epitomises what it means to be an icon. It is still Marilyn Monroe whose star shines the brightest.
While pin-ups, poster girls and primadonnas have faded in the public's collective consciousness, Monroe's image is as instantly recognisable as it ever was.
On August 8, 1962, Marilyn's body was laid to rest in the Corridor of Memories, ..24, at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.
Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine. But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe. We gathered here today, knew only Marilyn - a warm human being, impulsive and shy, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfillment. I will not insult the privacy of your memory of her - a privacy she sought and treasured - by trying to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our memories of her she reamins alive, not only a shadow on the screen or a glamorous personality. For us Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. We shared her pain and difficulties and some of her joys. She was a member of our family. It is difficult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident. Despite the heights and brillance she attained on the screen, she was planning for the future; she was looking forward to participating in the many exciting things which she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the startling sensitivity which she possessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, struggling to express itself despite the life to which she had been subjected. Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality - a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning - to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be a part of it, to share in the childish naivete which was so shy and yet so vibrant. This quality was even more evident when she was in the stage. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that foreshadowed what she would have become. Without a doubt she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage. Now it is at an end. I hope her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and a woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world. I cannot say goodby. Marilyn never liked goodbys, but in the peculiar way she had of turning things around so that they faced reality - I will say au revoir. For the country to which she has gone, we must all someday visit.
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