Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) is a universal icon. But, in parallel and despite her, she became the archetype of the dumb blonde in life. In the United States, some analysts link it to Populuxe, that typical design of the fifties and sixties that, through pastel colors and metallic plastics, wanted to give a luxurious appearance to consumer objects. Like Cadillac cars or drive-in hamburgers, Marilyn would be the emblem of happiness in an American key.
That's where his papers went. After the avant-garde period, postwar cinema, that of the golden age of Hollywood, wanted scripts that would sell tickets, without intellectual pretensions.
As far as light comedies are concerned, 20th Century Fox found a gold mine in the sweet girl, not too smart and oblivious to the effect that her beauty causes on men. Monroe embodied well the perfect blend of naivety and sex appeal, a character tailored for the male viewer of the time.
But with her there is a paradox, and it is that sensation of distance between the happy image that she wanted to project and what she experienced. She is a contradictory character, evoking glamor and melancholy at the same time, fascination and compassion. On the one hand are the fame, the stunning covers, the troubles with movie stars and sports... and, on the other, the extreme jealousy of Joe DiMaggio, the addiction to barbiturates, amphetamines and alcohol, an atrocious stage fright, depression and possible suicide or accident that would lead to his death.
It has been suspected that he was carrying burdens from his childhood. She was the daughter of a woman with no resources and schizophrenia – she didn't even know her father's name –, her first years would have been spent in foster homes and orphanages, with sexual abuse included.
This the press liked. Since her career had been built from the ground up, first as a pin-up model, which she would be something of a “calendar girl”, and then as an actress, she was an example of the “American dream”.
However, lately biographers have discovered a more perverse face of that public profile. As Thomas Harris explained, part of Monroe's success was based on the fact that, because she was low-educated, working-class, and morally light, she was seen as sexually accessible by the average male audience. In other words, what Harris means is that Grace Kelly would never have been offered the roles that she was offered.
It is true that, at first, she embraced the dumb blonde character, but also that she had a very long war with the directors of Fox, determined to pigeonhole her. She wanted to do other things, even once in a while. That is why she signed up for the Actors Studio, an academy for celebrities that trained actors in "the method", a system that through introspection into their own lives and that of the character sought to create sincere performances.
She gave some great performances, like in Bus Stop (1956) or In Skirts and Crazy (1959), because the fact is that she was a good actress. In The Misfits (1961), despite the problems posed to her filming by her addictions, she gave one of the most mature performances of her entire career. According to John Huston, the director, because she did not fake her emotions, but was "herself": "she went down to the depths of herself, she found it and brought it to consciousness."
Unfortunately, respect was not the general trend among his peers. Most of the actors and directors she worked with treated her with a mixture of sexism and condescension. Fox executives never took her medical problems seriously, forcing her to work and threatening her with tabloid headlines. That is why her death broke the hearts of so many of her, because they had the feeling that they had exploited her, and thus she remained forever in the popular imagination.
Decades later, the women, who initially shunned her films, have reconciled with Marilyn. She played dumb because of the demands of life and the script, and she did it very well, by the way. Here we recover some of her thoughts on her job and on the ghosts she faced.
