She acted out her life under the devouring gaze of a gigantic
audience, one that couldn't get enough of her: Marilyn, the enchanting
child-woman, the breathtaking sex-symbol, the unattainable goddess of
film. She was unforgettable in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some Like It Hot, and The Seven-Year
Itch. She was wildly acclaimed,
dominated the headlines, filled the gossip columns and incarnated the
dreams of a decade. Behind the glitz, glamour and the luscious smile which
enthralled the world was a vulnerable and immature woman. Did America know
it all along? Was that the secret source of her mystique; She had a
terrible childhood. She said that she was probably a mistake, that her
mother hadn't wanted to have her at all. She never knew her father and was
bounced between her mother's home and a series of adoptive families; her
mother had a nervous breakdown and Marilyn spent two years in an
orphanage. She never graduated from high school and married at sixteen,
perhaps to avoid being sent back to an orphanage. She was later to comment
that her marriage wasn't unhappy; but it wasn't happy either. She and her
husband just didn't have much to say to each other.
Her discovery was all part of the war effort. While her husband was
fighting in World War II Marilyn was in a factory checking parachutes. Ronald
Reagan sent David Conover, a twenty-five-year-old army photographer, to
photograph cheerful young munitions-factory workers. Conover took notice of this girl who could
make more out of a pose than anyone he had ever seen. The publicists took
his discovery and created "Marilyn Monroe", the icon of post-war
Hollywood. She was oddly detached and alienated, saying she always had the
feeling that she was not real, that she was something like a well-made
counterfeit. She was sure that everyone had similar feelings from time to
time but in her case things had gone so far that she sometimes thought she
was completely synthetic. She died on the night of 4 August 1962 under
mysterious circumstances, but her legend lived on and even grew.
Andy
Warhol, the son of Czech immigrants, began his artistic career in
advertising, moved on to film-making and became high-society's favourite
portrait artist. He ended up a cult figure, probably the cult
figure, of Pop Art. His Marilyn Monroe is a twentieth-century icon
of art. He wrote of his work that, whether or not his loud colours made
her into a symbol was irrelevant, and if the colours were beautiful, it
was because she was; beauty calls for beautiful colours. Marilyn
Monroe was commercialised beauty, quite artificial and quite
misunderstood.
