FFC 4 (2+3) pp.

121–143 Intellect Limited 2015

Film, Fashion & Consumption

Volume 4 Numbers 2 & 3
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/ffc.4.2-3.121_2

EDITORIAL

LUCY BOLTON
Queen Mary University of London

#Marilyneveryday: The
persistence of Marilyn
Monroe as a cultural icon
In April 2015 I was travelling in Istanbul and, on leaving the Grand Bazaar 1. Food stylist is Claire
through the Spice Market, I walked out into a side street of shops and cafes. I Clark, and props
stylist is listed as Sue
was immediately struck by an accessories shop, the hoarding for which was a Rowlands.
huge image of Marilyn Monroe’s face, wearing some just-discernible dangling
star earrings (Figure 1). Alongside this image was a series of other photographs,
some featuring accessories such as pearls (Figure 2), but the overarching attrac-
tion was Monroe’s face.
Not long after this, in my local coffee shop, I came across a photographic
illustration of a recipe for macarons in a cookery book called Indulge (C. Clark,
2007). Upon closer inspection, I realized that the macarons had been strategi-
cally arranged over the famous Cecil Beaton photograph of Monroe holding a
rose (Figure 3). These macarons were side-on, covering her eyes, aligned – or
juxtaposed – with her mouth, resembling lips, and perhaps suggesting breasts.
Her face, and her eyes, could not be seen. The pale, luxurious indulgence of
the Beaton image of Monroe was sufficient, at least in the mind of the food
and props stylist, to convey the requisite degree of indulgence to set off these
confections: displayed as all edible and ripe for devouring with delectation.1
These encounters with the images of Monroe, totally divorced from her
film work, being used in the selling of products, aspirations and concepts,

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Lucy Bolton

Figures 1 and 2: Marilyn Monroe advertises accessories in Istanbul, April 2015. Photo: Lucy Bolton.

Figure 3: Monroe as a backdrop for macarons (Clark 2007). Photo: Lucy Bolton.

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drove home to me how ubiquitous the Monroe image is. Having taught a 2. There is a Harpers
Bazaar article
class on film stardom for over ten years, I find that each year students are considering ten
well acquainted with the image of Monroe in the white halter-neck dress over actresses who have
the subway grating, even though only a handful of them will have seen any played Monroe on
film http://www.
Monroe film, let alone The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955). (If they have seen harpersbazaar.com/
one, it is likely to have been Some Like it Hot [1959].) culture/film-tv/g5775/
There is an instance of the image of Monroe not being instantly recog- actresses-who-played-
marilyn-monroe/; also
nized. The famous Bert Stern photographs of The Last Sitting were stolen in a New York Times video
1981, and found later that year by a construction worker in a dumpster outside showing Michelle
Williams getting into
a fast food restaurant in Brooklyn. The construction worker, John Vassos, did character for her role in
not recognize the model as Monroe, and only reunited them with photogra- My Week with Marilyn
pher Bert Stern when a friend told him about the advertised reward. Stern http://www.nytimes.
com/video/magazine/
paid Vassos $5000 for the stolen photographs, which had been taken in 1962 100000001173082/
at the last photo session Monroe sat for before she died. In 2000, the whole michelle-williams-as-
2,571 photographs taken at that sitting were published, even the ones that marilyn-monroe.html.

Monroe had clearly rejected by scratching crosses into the negatives (Carlson 3. For example, Lisa
2013). This rather sorry story conveys the idea of a somewhat arbitrary and Eldridge’s video https://
www.youtube.com/
fluctuating value attached to the Monroe image, as well as Monroe’s lack of watch?v=RAneUTr8mog
ownership of her own image. (accessed 25 March
2016), and beauty tips
Undeniably, Monroe is part of our everyday culture. Her image appears articles such as this one
all over all manner of artefacts, from mugs and handbags to ties and teddy in Marie Claire http://
bears, as well as appearing as fancy dress outfits, drag acts, tribute acts and www.marieclaire.com/
beauty/news/a16013/
in biopics such as My Week with Marilyn (Curtis, 2011) and The Secret Life marilyn-monroe-
of Marilyn Monroe (Collyer, 2015).2 Monroe is undoubtedly a cultural icon, beauty-secrets/.
inspiring numerous hair and beauty articles in magazines and ‘how to …’
make-up and hair tutorials on YouTube.3 There are innumerable Pinterest
boards devoted to her, dozens of Facebook groups and pages (includ-
ing ones for Marilyn Monroe’s grave and a Marilyn Monroe café), and
countless Instagram accounts. This led me to set up the Twitter hashtag
‘#Marilyneveryday’, in order to highlight the frequency with which one
encounters an image of Monroe in daily life. This special issue acknowl-
edges the cultural ubiquity of Marilyn Monroe and assesses some of the
reasons why this is still the case: why is she still so popular and why is her
image so frequently used in advertising and publicity for seemingly unre-
lated items?
The contributors to this journal each work with Monroe in very different
ways. Sarah Churchwell read 300 biographies in her research for writing The
Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (Granta, 2004) and so is uniquely well placed to
reflect upon the obsessions and preoccupations of biographers. Cathy Lomax
is an artist whose work is inspired by the make-up and fashion of female film
stars and has produced a series of paintings of Monroe’s white dresses, ghoul-
ishly absent from her physical body. Through her expertise on the relationship
between film and fashion, Pamela Church Gibson is able to assess Monroe’s
relationship to class and culture through her clothes, and to examine both
her fashion impact and her legacy. The issue of how to curate the work and
image of Monroe is explored in the in-depth interviews with curators from
the British Film Institute (BFI) and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), who
offer unique insight into the operation of Monroe as a contemporary cultural
attraction. My contribution to this issue is twofold. In this introductory article,
I will set out the context for the ‘#Marilyneveryday’ project and the events
at the BFI Marilyn Monroe Season in June 2015. At one of these events I
circulated a brief questionnaire to the audience that asked three questions: 1)

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4. Jackie Stacey’s Why are you attending the study day? 2) Why do you think Marilyn Monroe
ground-breaking work
progressed the field of
endures as a cultural icon? and 3) What is your interest in Marilyn Monroe
star studies by actually (fan/films/fashion/academic study/other)? In the spirit of Jackie Stacey’s Star
speaking to women Gazing (1993), I seek to show what people love about Monroe and the basis of
about how they
related to Hollywood her appeal – and this is not always what one might expect.4 Second, I had the
stars, mainly through pleasure of interviewing the curators of the Monroe film season and events
consumption of their at the BFI, and the curators of the Monroe exhibition at the NPG, and have
image. This research
revealed how women attempted to convey the conceptual and practical complexities of their tasks
styled their clothes in the section called ‘Curating Marilyn Monroe’. In this introductory article,
and hair like the stars,
but also how they saw
therefore, I will attempt to convey the magnitude of Monroe’s cultural pres-
stars as transcendent ence, and to indicate some of the realms of her influence, which the rest of the
beings and role models. issue will develop.
For an overview
of the field of star
studies as a discipline, THE MONROE INDUSTRY
Martin Shingler’s A
Critical Guide (2012) is There are several books on the topic of the industry that is Marilyn
excellent.
Monroe. In Marilyn Memorabilia: Putting a Price on the Priceless Performer,
Clark Kidder (described on the cover as ‘a highly sought-after appraiser of
Marilyn Monroe memorabilia’) writes that ‘although Marilyn Monroe was
with us for only a brief moment in time, she left such an indelible impres-
sion on the world that she will be remembered for an eternity’ (2002: 5).
The book demonstrates the mechanics of how this works, by cataloguing
over 200 pages of memorabilia, from dolls and magazines, to records, ciga-
rette cards and stamps, including a section on how to begin your collection
on Marilyn Monroe, how to trade with other collectors and how to spot
forged signatures. There is also a volume by Kidder called Marilyn Monroe:
Cover to Cover (in two editions), which arranges magazine covers chrono-
logically from 1946 to 1963, constituting a cavalcade of posed, enhanced
and colourized images of Marilyn’s life in two dimensions. The number of
books, photographic collections, reminiscences, dolls and other products is
inestimable and ever increasing. There is a recent volume in the series Fan
Phenomena on Marilyn Monroe (Block 2014), which examines her online
presence, imitators and impressionists, fashions and biopics, including the
television series Smash (2012, 2013), about the making of a Broadway musi-
cal based on Monroe’s life. There is even a memoir by Monroe’s dog, The
Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (O’Hagan
2011).

THE INSPIRATION
O’Hagan’s canine memoir, and Cathy Lomax’s collection of disembodied
Monroe white dresses, demonstrates how Monroe exceeds the category of
‘collectible’. It is apparent that Monroe continues to inspire creative work
in all imaginable fields, high fashion such as Dries van Noten’s spring 2016
menswear collection, and street art in Penang (Figure 4).
Monroe’s famous song and dance number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’, was re-imagined by retro vocal harmony
group The Puppini Sisters on their album Hollywood (2011), with blonde
Puppini, Kate Mullins, adopting the Monroe look. Mullins said,

The girls and I decided to pay homage to the Golden Era of Hollywood
for our fourth studio album titled Hollywood. We took direct inspira-
tion from iconic screen sirens and chanteuses of the age and naturally,

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Marilyn took a central role. ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ was 5. In interview with the
author, March 2016.
the song we felt best represented her contribution to the golden screen
and music scene. Marilyn seemed to effortlessly ooze glamour, class and 6. ‘Scarlett Johansson
behind the scenes of
endless sex appeal. She is a huge inspiration to me and to women of all “Dolce &Gabanna”,
ages, eras and sub cultures and we felt this song summed that up beau- July 2014, Marilyn
tifully. And after all, what gal wouldn’t want to sing about and shoot Monroe’ https://
www.youtube.com/
videos dripping in diamonds?!5 watch?v=3e5CbyL3yMk.

The sequence from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was famously re-enacted by

Madonna in her ‘Material Girl’ video (1985), and indeed Madonna has
reincarnated Marilyn in many of her promotional images across her career.
Debbie Harry has been quoted many times throughout her career as saying
that as a child she believed she was descended from Marilyn Monroe, and it
is an association still invoked today (Leith 2014). Many contemporary starlets
seem to go through a Monroe phase. Scarlett Johansson cloned Monroe on
the red carpet when she was building her career and has been seen in many
Dolce & Gabbana advertising campaigns looking and moving like Monroe.6
Stars such as Drew Barrymore and Lindsey Lohan have gone through
their Marilyn phases, and the song Elton John penned about her tragic death,
‘Candle in the Wind’, was co-opted for the public performance of the tragic
death of another blonde icon, Diana Princess of Wales, in 1997.
This adoption of ‘Candle in the Wind’ demonstrates that it is not just the
looks of Monroe that inspire others. It is also the apparent enigmatic qualities,
the contrast between the glamorous, joyful beacon of supreme sensuality, and
the reportedly tormented, lonely addict so often written about in biographies
and captured in melancholy photographs. Since the publication of Monroe’s
jottings, doodles, letters and notebooks, in Fragments (Monroe, Buchthal and
Comment 2012), another side of her life has entered the public sphere: that of
her own thoughts in her own words. These intimate jottings reveal a pensive,
thoughtful and reflective writer, with a fascination for poetry and ideas about
truth. The book inspired the documentary Love, Marilyn (Garbus, 2012), which
is a disconcerting attempt to give Monroe’s words life by having a range of
contemporary actors speak them. The film also includes clips of Monroe’s

Figure 4: Street art in Penang, January 2016. Photo: Tony Menzies.

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Figures 5–7: Kate Mullins recalls Monroe in the video for ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ by The Puppini Sisters.

7. Actress must have no recorded voice and some interviews. As the film progresses, it is accompanied
mouth can be viewed
here: https://vimeo.
by an increasingly tragic and dramatic soundtrack, undercutting scenes where
com/152498993. her words suggest she was happy, which gives the whole film a feeling that she
lived a life of yearning and striving for something more. This creates a percep-
tion of her life as a tragedy. Words from Truman Capote and Norman Mailer,
George Cukor and the Strasbergs, seem to construct an ultimately tragic
portrait of Monroe, culminating in sorrowful reminiscences about her death.
Fragments inspired students on the film studies programme at Queen Mary
University of London to make an essay film on the disjunction between the
public persona and her personal life. Second-year film students Lara Ibrahim
Mubaydeen and Luke Jamieson were struck by the mixture of elements in
Monroe’s image when they made their film, Actress Must Have No Mouth
(2015). Lara said, ‘She was very politically minded, and she was quite active in
civil rights, so we were drawn to that side of her’. For Luke,

We were particularly interested in Marilyn because, more than any of

the stars we researched, her image is the most prominent today: there
isn’t one image that can properly convey who Marilyn really was, so
we thought that by giving her a voice, through subtitles, then it would
be possible to give a greater sense of her as a person, rather than just
using images.

Lara and Luke’s film lasts for three minutes and 53 seconds, and takes inter-
view footage of Monroe from the 1950s and 1960s and overlays this with subti-
tles taken from the contents of Fragments.7 This technique serves to complicate
the image of Monroe and also the public sentiments she is expressing, which
creates an unnerving dichotomy.
As Lara observes,

The things she says are quite morbid. There’s one particular place where
she talks about having a dream that was like being cut open, and it was
really shocking, and we thought it would be really powerful if we juxta-
posed the two sides of her.

When asked what Monroe stands for to the students and their peers, Luke
replies that ‘there’s a mix of a lot of different things; vulnerability mixed with
sexuality, and there is an angelic quality as well’. Lara replied,

I remember the first time I saw her in Some Like it Hot she just glowed –
it sounds really clichéd but you couldn’t take your eyes off her, and
whenever she spoke she was mesmerizing. I was really surprised to
hear that she had started her own production company. I would have

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Figures 8–10: Stills from Actress Must Have No Mouth (2015).

thought that would be more common knowledge because it seems like

a really big deal.

Lara and Luke were also able to relate some of the responses to their film.
Lara said,

When we screened our footage to our peers who are roughly the same
age, a lot of the comments were like ‘I’ve never seen anything like that
before’, because some of the images we found were of her when it was
very clear she didn’t want to be there. There was definitely some level
of discomfort when watching them. And it was a cross-generational
thing: I showed it to my grandma, who was more familiar with her, and
she said similar things. The title of the film is actually from Fragments.
Jacqueline Rose picks up the quote specifically in her chapter on Monroe
in Women in Dark Times, and I found it really interesting, the idea that
Marilyn Monroe herself didn’t really necessarily have a mouthpiece to
talk about her political views.

I asked Luke what he hoped to achieve with the film:

What I wanted to achieve was not to try and convince anyone of reality,
or how things really were, but that it would make people question what
they see and suggest that Marilyn Monroe had more to her than both
the sex symbol and the vulnerable victim. Just to show her as a person
and not to make her into a fantasy of what you want her to be, whether
it’s fallen victim or hero.

These students are responding to the complexity of the Monroe image, which
is so inflected with her personality and character. It is insightful and ­sensitive
to hone in on the gap: there is the stratospheric magnitude of images of
Monroe in circulation in print and online, but these fail to convey the woman
that so many people want to know. As each of our contributors to this issue
notes, Monroe’s films are not widely seen today, and so acting plays a smaller
part in the circulation of her image than might be expected, but clearly is a
major foundation to her longevity.

THE MOVIE ACTRESS

Monroe appeared in over 30 films, and her devotion to improving her craft
and being taken seriously as an actress is well documented. Her acting abilities

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were certainly appreciated at the time. In Picturegoer in 1954, Ronald Morris

writes about Monroe as having found her forum in comedy:

Forget the glamour! Forget the come-hither slither! Forget that million-
dollar shape! Well, try, anyway… This girl Monroe can act. And all those
souls who believe that strong acting talent doesn’t come wrapped up in
a package like Monroe are going to have to think again.
(Morris 1954: 8, original emphasis)

Morris goes on to describe the way that in How to Marry a Millionaire and
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Monroe doesn’t just give a performance but creates
‘a character study that grows and grows on you’ (1954: 8). This same issue
reports that Twentieth Century-Fox was creating a new look for Monroe.
Hollywood correspondent Donovan Pedelty cables Picturegoer magazine,
saying:

Low hemlines and high necklines is the new studio policy for Monroe
[…] I believe Monroe is proving a considerable actress. I hear that ‘River
of No Return’, which she’s now making, will confirm my opinion. But
because of the way her shirt and jeans cling to that figure in the ducking
scene, nobody will notice the acting.
(Picturegoer 1954)

This tension between Monroe’s passionate desire and commitment to becom-

ing a more accomplished actress and the roles and reactions that her physi-
cality provoked, is an indication of her struggles. Perhaps it also feeds into
her appeal to audiences. This is the struggle of a person to be taken seriously:
an aspect of her character which people can relate to and which, although
not necessarily signalling vulnerability, does reveal both desire and concern in
relation to her work, and the unfair treatment by the industry and culture in
which she operated.
Photographer Philippe Halsman wrote in Life magazine in 1952, when he
had been asked to photograph her,

I found Marilyn anything but stupid, with an amazing frankness and a

good sense of humour, and her company stimulating even in a spiritual
way. The trait which struck me most was a general benevolence, an abso-
lute absence of envy and jealousy, which in an actress was astonishing.
(1952: 69)

There’s a long-standing fascination with whether or not Marilyn was a

dumb blonde or whether she was responsible for her own witticisms, or
‘Monroeisms’. Such interest is revealed in an interview in 1956, by Pete Martin.
Quizzing talent scout Flack Jones about whether or not Monroe came up with
her own witticisms, Jones says, ‘I’m sorry to disagree with the majority […]
but she makes up those cracks herself’ (Martin 1956: 108). A ghostwriter had
written that the reason Monroe did not like to suntan was because it confused
the colours in her wardrobe. Monroe had scratched this sentence out of the
draft that had been sent to her for approval. Jones relates their exchange:

‘That’s ridiculous’, she said, ‘Having a suntan doesn’t have anything to

do with my wardrobe’. I said, ‘You’ve got to say something, Marilyn.

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After all, the guy’s article is pretty short as it is’. She thought for a 8. As discussed by Laura
Mulvey in Fetishism
minute, then wrote, ‘I do not suntan because I like to feel blonde all and Curiosity
over’. I saw her write that with her own hot little pencil. (1996: 47–8) and Lucy
(Martin 1956: 108) Bolton in Film and
Female Consciousness
(2011: 101–02).
This story is so revealing, not only of the ongoing preoccupation with
Marilyn’s cognitive abilities, but because the description of her ‘little pencil’
and the perception of it as being ‘hot’ both patronizingly diminishes her size
and adulthood, and sexualizes her writing instrument because it is being used
by her hand. This is also a conversation between two men, Pete Martin and
Flack Jones, in which they discuss her ability to think wittily; this indicates
clearly the layers of prurient obsession with Monroe’s mind and body that is
so central to her persistence in the cultural imagination. Flack Jones refuses to
be drawn on psychological speculation, saying ‘I honestly think that Marilyn’s
the most complicated woman I’ve ever known. Her complexes are so complex
that she has complexes about complexes’ (Martin 1956: 110).
There is of course a fundamental unknowability about any star, but fans
and readers seem to be content with biographies and reminiscences about
other stars such as Ava Gardner or Elizabeth Taylor; with Monroe there is
a persistent fascination with what she was really like. This may have some-
thing to do with the level of artifice of her star persona, in terms of blonde-
ness, whiteness, affected facial mannerisms, such as the quivering lips and the
breathy baby voice. This could convey the idea that her image is so concen-
trated on the surface that she is never seen to plumb the depths.8 Her perfor-
mance as Roslyn in The Misfits (Huston, 1961), however, is evidence that the
kind of psychological delving required by that part was very much within
Monroe’s range of dramatic abilities, and yet this is not the image that persists
most widely in culture. This does not mean, however, that it is only the beauty
pin-up that people want to read about, or indeed that the pin-up is how
people see Marilyn Monroe, or, as Sarah Churchwell puts it, ‘their Marilyn’.
It is precisely because so many people are so attracted to Monroe that she
remains a draw for crowds of gallery attendees and cultural consumers as well
as moviegoers.

THE CULTURAL ATTRACTION

In autumn 2012 to early 2013, the NPG in London held an exhibition called
‘Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair’, and the ‘Hollywood Costume’ exhi-
bition was being staged at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), includ-
ing two of Monroe’s costumes: the nude dress from Some Like It Hot and the
white halter-neck dress from The Seven Year Itch. To have such visibility in
two of London’s major cultural institutions is testament to the magnitude of
Monroe’s persona and her continuing capital as a cultural attraction.
Co-curator of the ‘Hollywood Costume’ exhibition, Keith Lodwick, talked
to me about the exhibition at the V&A, and told me about some of the prac-
ticalities involved in exhibiting costumes worn by Marilyn Monroe. First, the
hunt for the white halter dress worn in The Seven Year Itch took more than
five years, involving a trip to meet Debbie Reynolds who had the dress in her
collection and a further hunt after Reynolds sold the dress for $4.6 million in
2011, which was the highest price in history for a Hollywood costume. The
dress was finally secured from a buyer in Qatar; it was Meryl Streep who
intervened and enabled co-curators Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Keith

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Lodwick to make contact and to secure the dress for the exhibition. The ways
in which a curator comes by a treasured costume might be far less intricate.
Lodwick tells how the ‘Running Wild’ dress from Some Like it Hot was bought
by the BFI for the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in the 1980s. MOMI
closed in the late 1990s and the dress had been kept in storage at the BFI,
but following conversations between these two institutions over the course of
Hollywood Costume, the dress was transferred to the V&A, who now have it
in storage.
Lodwick describes how the purpose of ‘Hollywood Costume’ was to put
the costume designer at the centre stage of the creation of meaning on-screen:
to show just how much character meaning is created and contained in these
iconic costumes. In Lodwick’s words, ‘How they unpack a script and create
a character, embodied by an actor’: but that embodiment becomes an issue
when displaying the costume. How can that simple green sweater and skirt
worn by Kim Novak as Judy in Vertigo look anything as dramatic and mean-
ingful when not inhabited by Novak’s hourglass form? The problem of coming
up with a mannequin that could possibly recall the shape of Monroe, let alone
evoke her spirit and presence, was a huge challenge. Figures 11 and 12 indi-
cate how successful the V&A textile mounting and conservation department
were in the display of these costumes. The use of video footage of the actor’s
moving head atop the convincingly filled-out Monroe costumes, created a
dynamic display that evoked the characters of Sugar Kane Kowalczyk and ‘the
girl’, recalling their mobility and vitality, and also capturing the iconic images
conveyed through the combination of these dresses, the characters, the films,
and the actor who played them. The dress that Monroe wore in the sequence
in Some Like it Hot that spans the singing of ‘I Wanna be Loved by You’ and
the attempts to melt the frozen lips of Tony Curtis’s fake Shell Oil heir, is, as
Lodwick describes, ‘sexy, curvaceous and transparent, making her look as if
she is lit from within’; and featured the cheeky heart cut-out on the buttock,
which is barely noticeable in the film itself but which is so in keeping with the
character of the love-seeking chanteuse (Figure 13).
The dress is designed by Orry Kelly to be inhabited by Sugar, not station-
ary on a mannequin, so the challenge is to capture the idea of character and
movement in order to breathe life into the display. Certainly other exhibitions
of Monroe’s dresses and costumes have been more static.
In June 2012, the Getty Images Gallery staged an exhibition of Monroe’s
costumes, photographs and memorabilia. A selection of costumes from films
including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Niagara and The Prince and the Showgirl,
were displayed in a row alongside each other on uniform mannequins in a
display cabinet. The exhibition of shoes, costumes and personal wardrobe at
the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum in Florence in 2013 was a rich and thought-
ful display of video clips, costumes mounted on mannequins, and works of art
that recalled the tradition of female beauty in art, of which Monroe is clearly
a part. Even here though, amidst the opulence of the setting and the richness
of the materials, Monroe’s complex personality was evident. The row of shoes
made by Ferragamo was almost entirely uniform: one simple court, with the
same heel height (4 inches), was repeated in 30 different colours. In the room
where her personal wardrobe was on display, this consisted mainly of a series
of black dresses of varying degrees of formality, and a few Pucci shirts. This
was not the off-duty wardrobe one might expect of the most photographed
star of the 1950s, and the woman perceived to be the most glamorous star of
all time.

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Figure 11: The dress from Some Like it Hot, designed by Orry Kelly (Victoria and Albert Museum).

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Figure 12: The dress from The Seven Year Itch, designed by William Travilla (Victoria and Albert Museum).

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Figure 13: The cheeky love heart cut-out on the rear of Orry Kelly’s iconic design (Victoria and Albert Museum).

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Lucy Bolton

9. Richard Dyer discusses Clare Freestone, co-curator of the NPG’s Monroe exhibition, ‘Marilyn
Monroe at length in Monroe: A British Love Affair’ (2012–2013), describes Monroe in the accom-
Heavenly Bodies, and is
referred to in detail by panying copy as ‘an everlasting icon of the twentieth century’ (2012: 9). In
Pamela Church Gibson fact, it seems that the everlasting nature of Monroe’s stardom is ensuring her
in this issue.
place in twenty-first-century iconicity too. In June 2015 the BFI held a Marilyn
10. The event was Monroe season, screening fifteen of her films and holding two events designed
co-curated by David
Edgar and Jemma
to probe the complexity and longevity of her star image. In ‘Curating Marilyn
Desai, founder of the Monroe’, the curators and programmers of the NPG and BFI screenings and
‘I am Dora’ curatorial events share their experiences of staging these events, revealing the think-
initiative, who also
chaired the panel: ing that went into the selection of Monroe as a subject for the exhibition and
www.iamdora.co.uk. screenings, as well as insights into the practicalities of making them happen,
many of which shed new light on such matters for academic scholars. The
reasons for staging a free exhibition on Marilyn Monroe, for example, may
be less romantic than we might imagine, and of course none of these events
would happen if they did not have commercial potential. It resonates with
Richard Dyer’s pioneering work on stardom to speak about Monroe as a guar-
antee against loss of investment (1979: 11), which in turn illustrates the contin-
ued relevance of Dyer’s work, as well as Monroe’s star power.9
There were two events programmed as part of the BFI’s Monroe season, and
both were designed by Education Curator of Public Programmes, David Edgar,
with the aim of investigating deeper meanings of Monroe’s image and career.
The first event was a panel discussion called ‘Who do you think you are, Marilyn
Monroe?’, where I was in conversation alongside Jacqueline Rose and Bonnie
Greer, considering the notion of Monroe as a feminist icon.10 Each member of
the panel chose a still image and a film clip that they thought significant in this
regard. I chose a photograph of Monroe and Simone Signoret cooking in the
kitchen together and Cherie’s rendition of ‘That Ol’ Black Magic’ from Bus Stop
(Logan, 1956); Rose chose a photograph of Monroe standing next to a bust of
Abraham Lincoln and a clip of Roslyn screaming at Gay and Guido from The
Misfits (Huston, 1961); and Bonnie Greer chose a photograph of Monroe with
Ella Fitzgerald and the clip of Miss Casswell’s big moment on the stairs from
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950). Each of these images and scenes is an incar-
nation of a different element of the Monroe spirit, and prompted a lively debate
between the panellists about their meanings and implications. For example,
I proposed that the Life magazine Monroe-and-Signoret photograph was an
image of a domesticated Monroe, engaged in faux culinary collaboration with
the wife of her lover (Yves Montand), and offered a vision of female solidarity
and companionship that is virtually absent from Monroe’s off-screen persona.
For Rose, however, the Monroe in this image appears nervous, overdressed
and childlike and fully outgunned by a powerfully androgynous Signoret,
who is ­assertively in charge of the cooking and the conversation. This differ-
ence no doubt reflects the differing academic backgrounds of Rose and myself,
feminism and psychoanalysis and feminist film studies, respectively, but also
demonstrates the possibilities any one image of Monroe offers.
Greer’s perspective was more personal, having studied at the Actors Studio
herself, as Monroe had done in the 1950s: she had also written the play Marilyn
and Ella Backstage at the Mocambo about the friendship between Monroe and
Fitzgerald, particularly Monroe’s role in ensuring that Fitzgerald was invited to
sing at the Mocambo club despite the colour bar. The play was first broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 in 2005 and subsequently adapted for the stage. Rose’s work on the
social burden that Monroe was expected to carry (Women in Dark Times, 2014),
and my own on the essentializing of Monroe as ‘the girl’ in The Seven Year Itch

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Figure 14: Signoret and Monroe tackle meal preparation together for the cameras. Bruce
Davidson, ‘Kitchen’, featuring Marilyn Monroe and Simone Signoret, 1960, Millers
and Montands portfolio, Los Angeles, CA, https://flic.kr/p/4dvMeU. Image licensed to
Rebeca Avila Contacto by Rebeca Avila © Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos.

(Film and Female Consciousness, 2011), ensured that three very different critical
perspectives were brought to bear on the question of what Monroe stands for,
ranging from isolated victim, to political activist, to idealization of femininity:
and it emerged clearly that Monroe encapsulates all of these and far more.
The second event accompanying the BFI season was a study day,
which I co-curated with David Edgar, called ‘Marilyn Monroe Study Day:
Understanding a Cultural Phenomenon’. I chaired the day, and spoke about
the impetus for #Marilyneveryday, the purpose of the event being to consider
the prevalence and popularity of Marilyn Monroe in popular culture and to
try to work out why she is everywhere, every day. The speakers were Sarah
Churchwell, author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (2000) and contribu-
tor to this issue, Pamela Church Gibson, also contributing, and Laura Adams,
Events Programmer at BFI Southbank and co-curator of the Monroe season
(alongside Helen de Witt). All these speakers are exceptionally well placed
to speak about different aspects of Monroe’s life, work and legacy, includ-
ing her film performances, relationship to fashion, and her inspiring of over
300 biographies. Churchwell is in the undoubtedly unique position of having
read all of these biographies, as she describes in her article ‘Trashing Marilyn:
Reflections of a meta-biographer’, and so is uniquely able to tease out recur-
rent themes, claims and obsessions across this remarkable body of work. Most
notably, in her talk at the study day, she identified the urge to tell ‘the truth’
about Monroe, especially about the circumstances and cause of her death.
Churchwell explains in her article the path that she decided to navigate, but
at the study day she was able to testify to just how many competing claims
to ‘truth’ there are, to suggest why this is the case, and also to reveal the
surprisingly high stakes involved in immersing oneself in the field of Monroe
biography.

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Lucy Bolton

Laura Adams spoke about Monroe ‘shining on the screen’ in her film
performances and analysed in close detail the facial expressions and bodily
movements that Monroe created in different genres of performance: comedy in
the scene where Lorelei describes Piggy squeezing the goat in Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes, song and dance in the provocative ‘We’re Having a Heatwave’ number
in There’s No Business Like Showbusiness (Lang, 1954), and serious drama in
the tender scene where Roslyn meets Guido and Gay in The Misfits. Adams
pointed out the mannerisms and gestures that created the emotional and physi-
cal elements of these performances, thereby indicating the detail and breadth of
Monroe’s acting ability. Adams’ focus shifted from Monroe’s nose scrunch and
pouting mouth as Lorelei, to her swaying pelvis and midriff as Vicky, and her
low key pace and dejected tone as Roslyn. Highlighting one particular shot from
the scene in the diner, Adams described Monroe’s reaction to Gay’s description
of ‘how you just live’ as ‘a unique instance of Marilyn smiling for herself’.
This is a provocative and insightful observation that adds to the poignancy
of this scene and this film, suggesting that Roslyn is a latter-day Monroe incar-
nation, who has achieved a measure of resignation and yet can still be pleas-
antly surprised. Adams observed that Monroe on-screen is ‘never in repose,
always keeping some aspect of her expression in motion’, and discussed the
role of Monroe’s various acting and performance coach: Natasha Lytess, her
first highly influential acting coach; Jack Cole, jazz dance choreographer; Hal
Schaefer, voice coach; Milton Greene, collaborator in the realms of produc-
tion and photography; and Lee Strasberg, at the Actors Studio in New York.
This insight into the commitment and work that Monroe put into honing her
craft and striving to improve as an actor, is an aspect that is lost in the concen-
tration on the surface, the pin up, the icon. Adams also pointed out that
Monroe forged touching relationships on-screen with animals and c­ hildren,
such as Gay’s dog in The Misfits, and Mark Calder in The River of No Return
(Preminger, 1954). These aspects of Monroe, her serious professionalism, and
her delicate sensitivity, are further evidence of the complexity of her image,
just as tales of her legendary lateness, and inability to remember her lines,
supplement this concoction of characteristics even further.

Figure 15: Roslyn smiles for herself in The Misfits (1961).

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 #Marilyneveryday

Pamela Church Gibson spoke about the fashion context in which Monroe
emerged, and how her ‘look’ in terms of clothes, hair and make-up broke
the mould of the 1950s. Analysing Monroe’s component parts, it became
clear that Monroe was not about structured ‘fashion’ at all, but rather that
she projected a relaxed individuality, about loose hair, glamorous make-
up, and clothes that either hugged her body or suggested nudity. These are
elements developed in Church Gibson’s article, ‘Marilyn and her female audi-
ences: Consumption, transgression, emulation’, along with Monroe’s complex
relationship to consumer fashion. Many people are able to try and dress like
Monroe, and always have done, which tends to keep her clothes firmly on the
High Street, rather than emulated in haute couture.

QUESTIONNAIRES
This brief consideration of some of the areas of cultural life where Monroe’s
impact is heavily evident, and the complexity of that impact, goes some way
to suggest how multifaceted Monroe’s image remains. No wonder, then,
that the reasons people have for being interested in Monroe are myriad, as is
evidenced by the questionnaires filled in by participants in the BFI Study Day.
This audience did contain some academics, but was mainly composed of non-
academics who have affection and respect for Monroe in all sorts of capacities.
We collected 38 completed questionnaires and people had written all over the
pages, turned them over to write on the reverse, and conveyed really personal
experiences and thoughtful arguments. I will set out some of the phrases and
opinions below, but in summary the words that stand out again and again are
‘unique’, ‘underrated’, ‘beauty’ and ‘complexity’: and within that complexity
the ideas of sexuality and vulnerability, but also intelligence and kindness. The
word ‘charisma’ is repeated several times, as is ‘enigma’, and yet, there is also
a powerful sense of affection for and closeness to the star. Someone observed
that she is ‘loved by men and women equally’, another that ‘many people
can find something relatable in their Marilyn, and possibly for some she is a
source of strength and inspiration’.
Responses to the question, ‘Why are you attending this study day?’, indi-
cated the range of participants and their different reasons for interest:

‘To hear other people discuss her seriously, to learn more’

‘A gift from myself for my birthday – to enjoy thinking about and being
immersed in Marilyn’
‘I still go Wow! Every time I see her. I think I secretly want to feel close
to her’
‘I’m writing a novel about Grace Kelly’
‘I have a lifelong love of Marilyn’
Someone who has ‘liked her for over eighteen years’ and someone who
has ‘loved her for over 60 years’
Someone writing their school dissertation
Someone who related because of depression and another because she
also had endometrioses
‘I’m a mother of a young actress’

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Lucy Bolton

‘She’s by far my favourite Hollywood star’

‘Her “story” applied to my angst-ridden adolescent self!’
‘Because anything to do with Marilyn is always fascinating and her
beauty and many talents have never ceased to give me great pleasure
[over 60 years]. A study day is a unique opportunity to share the love of
Marilyn with other like-minded people’

The range of interests in Monroe was both professional and personal:

‘I’m interested in her as a feminist icon. She broke the mould. I always
get very defensive when people portray Marilyn as a victim. To me, she
was a powerful, successful woman who made decisions, which were
HER decisions. I admire her for all she achieved. I’ve also admired her
as someone confident in her own physicality and sexual charisma. She
seems comfortable as a woman for herself. I think this comes over in
her films’
‘I’m a television writer. All my protagonists are women. I’m always
looking to create iconic characters who are strong, flawed, layered, and
real: like Marilyn’
‘I’ve been a Marilyn fan since my teens and saw as many films as I
could on VHS. I’m now an art historian with interests in both film
and fashion. She remains a personal style inspiration for me; I’ve read
numerous biographies and books about her and am enjoying rewatch-
ing her films’
‘I’m a director and a film-maker and I think she was very underrated as
an actress […] she was highly unique, full of contradictions and difficult
to understand’
‘Her performances; the ultimate purveyor of female “drag” in its highest
form, […] and yet it wasn’t who she really was or really wanted to be –
much was projected onto her’
‘It’s her talent that I’m a fan of’
‘I believe Marilyn deserves to be re-evaluated. She should be given credit
for her prodigious talent. I am so happy that she is being discussed with
respect and admiration. This is why I am here. It has been a revelation’.
‘Her relationship to feminism – can I be a feminist and a fan of Marilyn
Monroe? How does she fit into that discourse?’
‘I based my last fashion collection on MM. I fell in love and used her as
a muse’

When asked why the stardom of Marilyn Monroe endures, the insights people
offered were moving, thoughtful and to the point:
‘Her image has been fetishized and captured by famous artists, and the
conspiracy surrounding death’
‘She is everywhere as people profit from her image. People want what
she had (charisma, glamour), but also through the sheer force of who
she is – namely her talent’

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‘Mystery surrounding her death. Relatable personality, e.g. depression,

loneliness, alcohol, men seeing her as a sex object when all she wanted
was love; her beauty, coming from under privileged beginnings and
working hard to become something (a phoenix rising from the ashes),
her many men, myths surrounding her, her curvaceous body in a land
of size zero’
‘Her relatability – how she dealt with her depression and yet still
managed to be so successful. Her beauty – how she made herself up
(with make-up and clothes) to look the way she did’
‘Appears accessible and knowable’
‘I feel as if I know her, which of course I don’t’
‘So much mythology about her, particularly regarding her behaviour on
set, her reliance on the Strasbergs, her constant lateness and absence’
A future film Ph.D. student writes, ‘she transcends her primary
medium of film. In fact, I’m sure a lot of people haven’t seen many
of her films. Instead she stands for many things for different people:
excessive glamour, sex appeal, her body. As an image of femininity,
this endures’
‘Stunning without being cocky, and she is not your perfect model: her
figure is natural and gives people hope […] she is extremely empower-
ing and everybody in her presence seems ordinary compared to her’

‘Because of her remarkable star quality and charisma; she leaps off the
screen and out of the photograph’
‘Her image is so beautiful; I think her photographs speak a thousand
words and people are drawn to her’

‘She was talented, beautiful, and was in some great movies. She worked
hard to be famous and to be taken seriously, so her longevity shows
how that pays off’
‘Her acting and her talent was never recognised’

One person was very succinct:

‘Many reasons.
1. Her beauty and gifts as an actress
2. The tragic circumstances of her premature death
3. Her struggles to lead an active life as an actress in the face of
paparazzi and newshounds’
Another also provided a list of the following four:

‘1. She created an image of personal beauty to which women still

aspire;
2. She’s been an inspiration for many other artists, e.g. Madonna
3. The similarity of her early roles – she is still identified with the
Lorelei persona
4. Her tragic early death – if you compare to Brigitte Bardot, we see
her in the context of her later life’

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Lucy Bolton

What comes through most strongly is the multiple facets of Monroe’s stardom:
‘She was everything at once: playful and deep, sexy and political, savvy
and compassionate. A star and an underdog. Beautifully glamorous and
human. An enigma never goes out of fashion’
‘Intelligent, great quotes, amazing style, real faults and difficulties’
‘She was very beautiful, underrated as an actor, and had a tortured
private life’
‘She is incredibly charismatic, has a lot of presence, there is a sensitivity
and strength in how she comes across. There is a knowing innocence in
her films that is funny and endearing’
‘I love her films, they always put me in a good mood when I watch them.
She is very charismatic, beautiful, and there is a vulnerability about her
(although also a strength), but not in a weak way; it’s a vulnerability full
of empathy and awareness. When I found out she had spoken out on
behalf of gay rights and civil rights it didn’t surprise me, because of that
empathy and awareness she embodied’
‘She is adaptable, people choose what they want her to be. She is
elevated beyond relatable so we create what we want her to be’
‘Despite all or any books or articles to the contrary, I think Marilyn was
not only a fine actress and personality but also a very nice person – this
endures and shines through’
‘The different facets of MM can fill different gaps in what we need – she
is an icon we need’

‘AN ICON WE NEED’

This quote seems to encapsulate many of the aspects that contribute to
Monroe’s longevity. There is undeniably the status of the icon about many
of her images, most notably the Andy Warhol artwork; the white halter-neck
dress billowing up around her waist; the image of her from behind in the
nude sparkly dress as she sang ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ to JFK, and
the young nude stretched out on red fabric in the ‘Golden Dreams’ calendar.
The idea of us needing her is an inversion of the neediness so often attrib-
uted to her persona, and suggests that perhaps there are so many aspects
to her image that she embodies something for many people, whether it is
her performance, her health, or her struggle to be taken seriously, and those
elements are not all reliably stable. As one participant wrote, ‘there is so much
to relate to: sometimes vulnerable, sometimes in charge’.
One questionnaire raised the issue of how social media contributes to
the understanding we have of Monroe. Referring in particular to the Monroe
quotes on social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram, this
respondent observed:

‘Are they reconfirming the popular stereotype? I think the quotes are
interesting because they’ve moved the story on from her image to “what
she said” (if indeed she did “say” it) […] You don’t need to read a bio to
know ‘her’ beyond the image’

This proliferation of a personality called Marilyn Monroe, full of witticisms,

quotes and sayings, is an aspect of her image that has certainly developed

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in the light of fan sites, blogs and accounts with hundreds of thousands of
followers. Most of this is founded on appreciation and affection. There is
another angle to this adaptability and manipulation of images, however. In
her consideration of Hollywood female stars, Karen Hollinger writes in rela-
tion to Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland that their lives

have been the subject of numerous star biographies, but serious scholarly
analysis has yet to investigate fully the effects of commercial exploitation
on female stars. This exploitation is exacerbated by the fact that contem-
porary stars now suffer from a new form of commercial commodification
not found in the studio era: exploitation by the Internet porn industry.
(Hollinger 2006: 58)

This article, and indeed this special issue, perhaps skirts around the question
of exploitation and rather looks at the conceptual reasons why such continued
use of the Monroe image for cultural consumption might occur and some of
the ways in which it does. My aim has been to demonstrate the extent of the
popularity of Marilyn Monroe today, and to offer some suggestions – by fans,
curators, academics and artists – as to why her persona remains so relevant.
There are, of course, many further avenues to pursue, and this issue prob-
ably raises more questions than it answers, but perhaps that is an appropriate
place for scholarship on Marilyn Monroe to be.

REFERENCES
Block, M. (ed.) (2014), Fan Phenomena: Marilyn Monroe, Bristol: Intellect.
Bolton, L. (2011), Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking
Women, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carlson, B. (2013), ‘Obituary, Bert Stern: Photographer who became best
known for “Last Sitting” of Marilyn Monroe’, The Independent, http://
www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bert-stern-photographer-who-
became-best-known-for-the-last-sitting-of-marilyn-monroe-8682291.
html. Accessed 24 April 2016.
Clark, C. (2007), Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts, Bath: Absolute Press.
Collyer, L. (2015), The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, 2 episodes, USA: Asylum
Entertainment, Don Carmody Television.
Curtis, S. (2011), My Week with Marilyn, UK and USA: The Weinstein
Company, BBC Films.
Dyer, R. (1979), Stars, London: BFI Publishing.
—— (1987), Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
Eldridge, L. (2012), ‘Marilyn Monroe iconic makeup look’, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=RAneUTr8mog. Accessed 24 April 2016.
Fisher, L. A. (2015), ‘10 Actresses who portrayed Marilyn Monroe in film’,
Harpers Bazaar, http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/g5775/
actresses-who-played-marilyn-monroe/? Accessed 24 April 2016.
Freestone, C. (2012), Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair, National Portrait
Gallery Guide, Autumn/Winter, London: National Portrait Gallery, pp. 8–9.
Garbus, Liz (2012), Love, Marilyn, USA and France: Diamond Girl Productions
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Greer, B. (2005), Marilyn and Ella, BBC Radio 4, 16 December.
Halsman, P. (1952), ‘Shooting Marilyn’, Life, 7 April, pp. 66–70, 84.
Hollinger, K. (2006), The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star, New
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Ibrahim Mubaydeen, L. and Jamieson, L. (2015), Actress Must Have No Mouth,

London: Queen Mary University of London.
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michelle-williams-as-marilyn-monroe.html. Accessed 24 April 2016.
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CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Lucy Bolton is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of
London and guest editor of this special issue of Film, Fashion & Consumption.
Her research focuses on film and philosophy, with particular interest in femi-
nist philosophy and phenomenology. She is the author of Film and Female
Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women (Palgrave 2011, paper-
back 2015). She has published widely on the relationship between the work of
Luce Irigaray and cinema, and is also interested in the work of Virginia Woolf
and Iris Murdoch. She is currently writing a monograph on Iris Murdoch’s
philosophy and contemporary cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
Lucy also researches, teaches and publishes on stardom and celebrity, and
is currently writing about the stardom of Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner in
the film Mogambo (John Ford, 1953). She has recently co-edited, with Julie

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 #Marilyneveryday

Lobalzo-Wright, a collection entitled Lasting Stars: Images that Fade and

Personas that Endure (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and has written about the film
performances of Vivien Leigh for Vivien Leigh: Actress, Star, Icon (Manchester
University Press, 2016), and also women in Clint Eastwood’s films for Tough
Ain’t Enough: The Film Career of Clint Eastwood (Rutgers University Press, 2017).
Lucy is co-founder of the Living British Cinema forum based at QMUL.
She is on the editorial board of the journal Film-Philosophy, and is co-editor,
with Richard Rushton, of the new book series Visionaries: Thinking through
Female Filmmakers (Edinburgh University Press).
Contact: School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University
of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom.
E-mail: l.c.bolton@qmul.ac.uk

Lucy Bolton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

143
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