Marilyn Monroe died unpardonably young. She hadn't been around for more than 35 years. That's far too short. And now she is one hundred years old. And dead and gone for 64 years. We lost her in 1962. About a year before her controversial paramour, the President of the United States, John F Kennedy was killed. Despite not being with us for more than 6 decades, she is still vibrant in my memory, a bombshell blonde.
We grew up together. About 15 years apart. When she died, I was 22. Old enough to be enthralled and entranced by the rare repast of her body, by the magical carnival of her contours. She became the nymph of my student day pornographic yen. She was my deity of the fresh water, swimming alongside me, stark naked, in my daydream. Until I got to know her in her biography by Norman Mailer. Then I saw the unknown, undiscovered side of the lunar enigma.
Marilyn Monroe /Wikipedia
In Mailer's biography, Marilyn says: I am a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they have made of me - and that I have made of myself - as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my story is the same as any other woman, and I can't live up to it.
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Marilyn spent a traumatic childhood in foster homes and orphanages before marrying, as soon as she was 16. Her first marriage somehow worked for 4 years. Then she fell for a baseball bull: Joe DiMaggio. And stayed married for the years 1954 - 1955. Then she met the famous American playwright and intellectual Arthur Miller. And then Marilyn did something she should never have done.
Monroe and Joe DiMaggio shortly after their wedding, January 1954 /Wikipedia
She married Arthur Miller, who, right after marriage, wanted Marilyn to be a good wife. And how would Marilyn become a 'good wife’? Arther's answer couldn't be simpler: You would make only one movie every 18 months. But what would I do the rest of the time? Asked Marilyn. And Pat came to Arthur’s answer: The rest of the time be my wife. That's a full-time job. And this marriage, which ended in divorce after five years in 1961, a year before her suicide, had left her devastated.
Monroe and Arthur Miller at their wedding, June 1956 /Wikipedia
For as long as she lived, she would have to desperately struggle, behind the glamorous Hollywood facade, with severe psychological torments. The battle for Marilyn was relentless against debilitating depression and insomnia. And she got tired of constant medications. And at this point drifted into her life Ralph Greenson, an elderly American psychiatrist, who started inviting her to his home, blurring professional boundaries. Their relationship became complex.
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By this time, Marilyn Monroe was in a desperate mental condition and needed a psychiatrist to depend on for every decision she made. She got one soon: Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. Anna found Marilyn to be emotionally unstable, extremely impulsive and hard put to bear solitude and at times paranoid. But Anna Freud also realised that Marilyn was not a dumb beauty, as most men thought she was. On the other hand, despite her constant depression and insecurity, she believed in radical leftist politics and in counterculture as a gateway to a more expansive way of living. It was this Marilyn Monroe who opined to Anna Freud one afternoon: Like any creative human being, I'd like a bit more control. Goethe said that talent is developed in privacy, and it's really true. There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor.
Monroe posing for photographers in The Seven Year Itch (1955) /Wikipedia
But the irony was, Marilyn Monroe was terribly scared of solitude. She couldn't bear to be alone with herself. She felt lonely with herself. And insecure in her own company. It's Marilyn Monroe, most of us don't know. And maybe even don't bother to know. Anna Freud had a fleeting glimpse of this undiscovered Monroe.
Behind Hollywood’s brightest smile was a woman battling loneliness, heartbreak and self-doubt. /Wikipedia
There is another story between Marilyn Monroe and Anna Freud that has mostly remained under cover. The famous director John Huston approached Marilyn to appear in his film on Sigmund Freud as his patient. It was the central role. But Marilyn didn't know whether it would be right to accept the role without consulting Anna Freud. Anna advised me against it! And pat came the answer. However, the film finally got made, under the name The Secret Passion. Montgomery Clift appeared as Sigmund Freud. And Susanahha York as his patient. And Anna Freud, for reasons not known to me, slowly drifted away from Marilyn. She died alone and naked from a barbiturate overdose on August 4, 1962, in her house in Los Angeles, with her hand on the telephone next to her bed. But by then she had come to the very end. No more time....
