Marilyn Monroe: Fame at Any Price, a feature-length documentary, is showing in France on the free channel, Arte TV, on Monday, April 6, at 10:40 pm. It is also available to stream outside France (with subtitles) via the Arte in English website.
This film was originally released in 2022 under a different title, Dream Girl: The Making of Marilyn Monroe. Its world premiere was held at the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on the 60th anniversary of Marilyn’s death.
“How did Marilyn Monroe become one of the greatest sex symbols of all time? What drove a prudish little Californian girl, who was not especially pretty nor exceptionally talented, to become this incredibly striking platinum blonde superstar? How did she become the icon capable of balancing innocence with raw sensuality, whilst continuing to captivate the masses to this day? How did she achieve this? And what price did she pay?
The result of 10 years of extensive research, we are now able to unravel the myth of Marilyn and correct the wild inaccuracies found within so many documentaries and biographies. So many people have been taken in by the pre-approved, media-friendly story, which was in fact invented by Marilyn herself.
Our film provides new and lesser-known information about her real childhood and upbringing, her steely determination as an intelligent and driven woman hiding behind the fragile façade of being a blonde bombshell. Finally, we reveal the decisive help she received from notorious mobsters, with whom she had a complicated relationship, and the importance of several little-known mentors, starting with her acting coach Natasha Lytess, with whom she had a same sex relationship.
The film combines exclusive interviews, rare archive materials and enlightening film extracts, alongside graphic illustrations and animations that will allow us to recreate several key moments of her private life.”
This three-part documentary is available on DVD in French and English versions, and most recently appeared in Japan. Director Ian Ayres also published an illustrated book (in French), Marilyn Monroe: The Woman Behind the Icon.
“Sixty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe, a cultural icon, remains an enigma in many respects. How can we separate fact from fiction when so much has already been said, written, and shown? How can we answer the multitude of questions that remain unresolved? To understand who the woman behind the star was, Ian Ayres sought out numerous witnesses, including those who saw Norma Jeane’s rise and transformation into Marilyn Monroe. Confessions from those close to her (her adopted sister Nancy Bolender-Jeffrey; Gladys Wilson and Bob Stott, her high school friends; William Carroll, the first photographer to pay her …) illuminate her incredible journey. Invaluable accounts from figures now deceased (Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis, media mogul Hugh Hefner, and producer Stanley Rubin) complete this moving book, illustrated with intimate and, in some cases, previously unpublished photographs. The book has a foreword by actress Elsa Zylberstein, a great admirer of Marilyn Monroe. Ian Ayres is an author and director. Born in Los Angeles, he now lives in France. He notably directed the documentary Tony Curtis, the Kid from the Bronx, which was screened at numerous festivals.”
Returning to the documentary, the great value of Marilyn Monroe: Fame at Any Price (aka Dream Girl) lies in its raw material, ie the many people whom Ayres has interviewed. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Donna Corcoran, the former child actor who played ‘Bunny’, the unlucky charge of Marilyn’s disturbed babysitter in Don’t Bother to Knock.
The first part, dealing with Norma Jeane’s childhood, first marriage and transition from model to actress, is perhaps the strongest, as featured in Télé Poche, a TV listings magazine.
“During her short life, Marilyn Monroe, who died before reaching her 37th birthday, lacked safe havens … But there was one person who never abandoned her, and vice versa: her older half-sister Berniece Baker, whom she discovered when she was eighteen years old, thanks to a letter she sent him in 1944. At the time, Berniece, married to a man named Paris Miracle and pregnant, was living in South Carolina.
They corresponded before meeting, and then became close. ‘She called me constantly to ask what I should or shouldn’t do, to tell me about her life, her joys. We were very close. One day, I told her not to work with Marlon Brando. He wasn’t her type. She turned down the role!’ Berniece confided.
In the book My Sister Marilyn, published in 1994, Berniece said she had never recovered from Marilyn’s death in 1962 and didn’t believe for a second the suicide theory, believing that her younger sister was, on the contrary, in the midst of rebuilding her life.
‘She had so many plans, she had just bought a house,’ she declared in a report broadcast in July 1994 on the France 2 evening news. It was Berniece who, alongside Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn’s ex-husband and friend, and Inez Melson, her financial advisor, took charge of organising the icon’s funeral.”
The second part, which retraces Marilyn’s path to stardom, begins with a dubious claim that mobster Bugsy Siegel engineered her break into movies. On July 25, 1947, Marilyn joined other models for a publicity event at the Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas strip. Her friend Bill Pursel was also there, but Siegel – who had launched the hotel just a few months before – was conspicuously absent, having been shot dead by rival gangsters in June.
And while Marilyn’s close dependence on Natasha Lytess (her acting coach from 1948-1954) led to gossip in Hollywood circles, there is no solid proof of a same-sex relationship as stated above.
It is later claimed that Marilyn’s second husband Joe DiMaggio was acquainted with Sam Giancana, the Chicago mobster allegedly involved in vote-fixing during the 1960 presidential election won by John F. Kennedy. Giancana was rumoured to have been at the Cal-Neva Lodge, owned by Frank Sinatra, when Marilyn visited the resort in July 1962.
This remains unconfirmed, however – and unlike his former friend Sinatra, DiMaggio was never associated with organised crime.
The last part is rather rushed, taking us through the peak of Marilyn’s career to her untimely death – as briefly noted by Cécile Mury in her review for Télérama.
“Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jeane Mortenson, would have turned 100 on June 1st. To celebrate the birthday of this absolute icon of the 20th century, this epic documentary, nearly three hours long, meticulously retraces an extraordinary life, which began as it ended: poignantly. Throughout her life, Marilyn carried the wounds of the traumatised child she once was: abandonment, abuse, and foster families (a dozen until she was 16). She was a vulnerable young girl, starved for love, who boarded the train to stardom, as this captivating series by Ian Ayres reveals.
The result of ten years of research, it is filled with rare and precious archival footage: film clips, numerous testimonies, including the very moving one from actor Jerry Lewis, who discusses in an interview how Marilyn felt suffocated by the role of a global sex symbol, when she was simply ‘a woman. Wonderful, who was just trying to live up to expectations. […] When she was depressed, it took two days to get her out of the house.’
From her vulnerabilities to her triumphs, nothing is left out, everything is illuminated, dissected, documented, and commented on: the wounded lover, from Joe DiMaggio to Yves Montand and Arthur Miller, but also and especially the actress consumed by doubt and anxiety, always late to set, yet ready to reinvent herself as a zealous student at the Actors Studio. A beautiful, subtle, and thorough portrait of a deeply moving woman behind the glamorous icon. It’s a shame that, in the final minutes, the documentary succumbs, without much critical distance, to the controversial theory of the star’s assassination, disguised as a suicide (possibly by the Mafia, in connection with the CIA), a consequence of her dangerous liaisons with the Kennedy brothers. A (nearly) flawless film, then.”
And finally, tomorrow’s screening of Marilyn Monroe: Fame at Any Price on Arte TV is preceded at 8:55 pm by one of her best-loved films, The Seven Year Itch.
“This is undoubtedly Marilyn’s most iconic film: the famous scene where her dress billows up over a subway grate belongs to Hollywood mythology. At the time, the film appeared as a denunciation of the sexual obsessions and frustrations of the American male. Today, it has lost some of its audacity, but remains a dazzling comedy … At once jealous and lustful, Tom Ewell delivers the performance of his life. As for Marilyn, the way she climbs stairs, wears a terrycloth robe or a cheap little dress, and effortlessly arouses a plumber or a husband who desperately wants to be seduced is simply unforgettable.”
– Pierre Murat, Télérama
Thanks to Divine Marilyn Monroe
The Marilyn Report 