All About Marilyn: A Centennial Celebration – focusing on her classic comedies and the CinemaScope years – opens today at AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland, just north of Washington D.C.
“Born on June 1, 1926, as Norma Jeane Mortensen, Marilyn Monroe was an outsized pop culture figure whose glamorous life — onscreen and off — is the stuff of legend. Unlike the sexy, dim-witted blondes she portrayed in many of her movies, in reality Monroe was a smart, shrewd actress who took her craft seriously, founding her own production company and studying method acting under Lee Strasberg. She was an artist through and through, and although her career lasted just under 15 years, Monroe left an unforgettable mark on Hollywood that still has not faded 100 years after her birth. To celebrate the motion picture legacy of this inimitable screen icon, AFI Silver presents a selection of her best films, tracing her rise from scene-stealing bit player to full-fledged star.
20th Century–Fox introduced CinemaScope, an innovative widescreen format, in 1953 at the height of Monroe’s career, and it was utilised in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONARE, RIVER OF NO RETURN, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and BUS STOP. See our CinemaScope Summer series for additional titles shot in this format.”
- GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES: August 7, 9, 11-12 – “In Howard Hawks’ wicked musical romp, best-friend lounge singers Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) and Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe), ‘Two Little Girls from Little Rock,’ board a cruise ship bound for Europe. Dorothy is on the prowl for a handsome hunk; Lorelei is engaged to marry fiancé Gus Esmond Jr. (Tommy Noonan) once they reach Paris but tends to get distracted at the sight of bling. Getting an eyeful of diamond magnate Sir Francis Beekman’s (Charles Coburn) rocks has her singing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ in the famous, and famously referenced, showstopping number.”
- HOW TO MARRY A MILLONAIRE: August 14-15, 17-18 – “Hapless New York bachelors face a triple threat when three models (Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable) pool their money to rent a posh Manhattan penthouse to use as their bachelorette launching pad for snagging themselves millionaire husbands. Convinced that men do not make passes at ‘girls who wear glasses,’ near-sighted Pola (Monroe) attempts to jump through hoops to impress her millionaire-beau. But what starts out as a simple plan for economic survival turns the women into hopeless romantics. Adapted for the screen by Nunnally Johnson (THE DIRTY DOZEN, THE GRAPES OF WRATH), this was the first-ever film to be photographed in CinemaScope.”
- RIVER OF NO RETURN: August 21-23, 26 – “Shot on location in the Canadian Rockies, Otto Preminger’s first attempt at widescreen aesthetics was also one of the first CinemaScope westerns. ‘Somehow it embraces more,’ Preminger said. ‘We see more widely, and it fits into long takes better.'”
- THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH: August 28-29, 31; September 2 – “The iconic image of Monroe in her stunning white dress is made all the more impressive for having been shot in the widescreen CinemaScope format.”
- BUS STOP: September 4-7, 9 – “Rancher Bo Decker (Don Murray) does his best to lasso Chérie (Marilyn Monroe) for himself in Joshua Logan’s dramatic CinemaScope adaptation of William Inge’s Tony-nominated Broadway play.”
- SOME LIKE IT HOT: September 11, 13-15 – “‘Nobody’s perfect,’ but Billy Wilder’s boundary-breaking comedy just may be.”
The Marilyn Report 