Marilyn Monroe: The Last Interview

(Paperback)

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Nearly sixty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a figure whom everyone loves but no one really knows. The conversations collected here help explore and explain that phenomenon, and offer insights into the unique type of fame and mystique that, to this day, belong to Monroe alone. During her short life, Marilyn Monroe was globally revered as the sex symbol of the 1950s and 60s, and the originator of "bombshell blonde" image. Today we understand her better as someone keenly self-aware of the artiface involved in playing that part, and as a world-class actor poised to break out of the role that Hollywood assigned her. The conversations gathered here--spanning her emergence on the scene to just days before her death at age 36--show Monroe at her sharpest and most insightful on the thorny topics of ambition, fame, femininity, desire, and more. With an introduction from Sady Doyle that asks us to think of Monroe, not as tragic, but as righteously and justifiably angry, this collection offers a new look at a figure whom the media of the day, and our own assumptions about her and her "type", have kept us from ever getting to know.

Reviews

"I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt . . . She was an unusual woman, a little ahead of her times. And she didn't know it." Ella Fitzgerald

"Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down, but had a strong emotional intelligencea keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence." Marlon Brando

"The minute that camera turned on her, she became this incredible creature. . . She was just herself, and she was absolutely dazzling as herself." Lauren Bacall

Author Bio

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) was an actress, model, global celebrity, and one of the twentieth century's most famous pop icons. Born in Los Angeles as Norma Jeane Mortenson, she appeared in her first movie at age 21 and achieved breakout success in 1953. Monroe went on to star in more than 20 films, including Gentleman Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like it Hot. Sady Doyle is the author of Trainwreck and Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers. Her work has appeared in In These Times, The Guardian, Elle.com, The Atlantic, Slate, Buzzfeed, Rookie, among other publications. She is the founder of the blog Tiger Beatdown, and won the first-ever Women's Media Center Social Media Award. She's been featured in Rookie- Yearbook One and Yearbook Two, and contributed to the Book of Jezebel. She lives in upstate New York.