Marilyn’s Film Noir Style

Marilyn’s breakthrough movie, The Asphalt Jungle, is featured in Kimberly Truhler’s new coffee-table book, Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s. (Although released in 1950, the film was made in the Fall of 1949.) Over ten pages in this fully-illustrated chapter, Truhler discusses Helen Rose’s designs for Marilyn’s character Angela Phinlay, the conniving young mistress of a corrupt businessman; and also looks ahead to Monroe’s ‘femme fatale’ star turn in another film noir, Niagara (1953), with costumes by Dorothy Jeakins. (Kimberly has a long-standing interest in Marilyn, and introduced a screening of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the historic Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, as part of a ‘Fashion & Film: The Fifties‘ retrospective in 2018.)