Marilyn Fan » News

Angelina Jolie NOT portraying Marilyn Monroe

Marloes — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:28:59 +0000

Angelina Jolie won’t be playing Marilyn Monroe after all.

Earlier this week, author Andrew O’Hagan said the actress, 35, would portray the blonde bombshell in the movie version of his novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog. But the Oscar winner’s rep tells the Los Angeles Times: “Angelina is NOT attached to this project.” Jolie, who has been promoting Salt in Europe this week, also shot down the report. “This is a new rumor,” she told reporters at the Salt premiere in London Monday. “It sounds very nice – I just haven’t got the phone call yet. You guys will probably know before I do.”

Source: US Magazine

Angelina Jolie to Play Marilyn Monroe?

Marloes — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:56:24 +0000

After Michelle Williams another Hollywood star might be taking up a role as Marilyn Monroe. Angelina Jolie (35) is rumoured to be playing Marilyn in a movie version of The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, so tells author Andrew O’Hagan tells The London Telegraph. Frank Sinatra will be portrayed by George Clooney.
An official announcement has not been made.
‘The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe’ follows Monroe’s last two years through the eyes of her pet, Maf, a Maltese terrier which was a gift from Sinatra in 1960.

Angelina Jolie said: “I would be honored [to play the role], but we haven’t gotten the script yet.”

Source: US Magazine

Marilyn Monroe’s last weekend

Marloes — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:16:05 +0000

I found the following article on the website of Dailymail.co.uk:

On Sunday, August 5, 1962, the body of Marilyn Monroe was found naked and face-down on her bed at her home on Fifth Helena Drive, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Brentwood, California. She was 36 years old.
‘The long troubled star clutched a telephone in one hand. An empty bottle of sleeping pills was nearby,’ reported the Associated Press that morning.

Long before she was officially discovered dead on the Sunday, neighbours had seen a mysterious – and still unexplained – ambulance parked in front of the film star’s residence on the Saturday evening.
They also reported a helicopter hovering overhead. Raised voices and the sound of breaking glass were also heard that night. Other neighbours reported that in the early hours a hysterical woman – who remains unidentified – had screamed: ‘Murderers! You murderers! Are you satisfied now that she’s dead?’

For 48 years, Marilyn Monroe’s death – and the events that later came to light: reports of a visit that night by her lover Bobby Kennedy; of an ambulance that took her away breathing and brought her back dead – has remained one of Hollywood’s most enduring and tantalising mysteries.

I was a reporter in New York at the time and flew to Los Angeles that morning to cover the story. I can still recall the haunting sound of the antique wind chimes – a gift to her from the poet Carl Sandburg – that hung beside her pool, on which floated a child’s plastic yellow duck. It was a melancholy sight. I had known her a little and it made me sad. I don’t think the death of any other movie star has intrigued the public as much as Monroe’s. Was it murder? Suicide? An accidental overdose? Some have suggested that her former lover Frank Sinatra, who she had come to rely on, could have saved Monroe – but chose to turn his back on her when she was at her lowest ebb.
The questions and doubts, the revelations and scandals that always follow the sudden death of a celebrity – especially beautiful ones, who die young – have continued to fascinate me, as have the unaccountable silences of several key witnesses.
But after nearly 50 years there seemed little more that could be said or discovered.

Until now. In London as part of a two-month nationwide tour of his much anticipated show, Swinging Las Vegas, the legendary American jazz pianist and singer, Buddy Greco – who once rubbed shoulders with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack and now lives in Essex with his fifth wife – talked to me about the mysterious weekend Monroe spent at the notorious Mafia haunt, the Cal-Neva Lodge, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, five days before she died.

Picture on the left: Before the fall out: An undated picture of the actress talking to former lover Sinatra at a casino in Nevada

It is the first time anyone has revealed first-hand what happened there. Now 83, he is sitting in Locale Italian restaurant on London’s South Bank. Still handsome, with a trademark smile, the performer made famous by such hits as The Lady Is A Tramp and Girl Talk remembers Monroe, who was exactly his age, with both fondness and sadness.
Uncertainty, contradiction and tragedy have always surrounded the mysterious and fateful weekend of July 28 and 29, 1962.
Those who were there – including her former lover Sinatra (who had invited her to Cal-Neva), Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr., Juliet Prowse ( who was engaged to Sinatra), Peter and Pat Kennedy Lawford, and Paul ‘Skinny’ D’Amato, who managed the Cal-Neva Lodge for its owners Sinatra and his partner, the notorious Mafia godfather Sam Giancana – are either dead or still refuse to talk about what happened during those 48 hours.

Indeed, while more than 100 books have been written about the life and death of the woman who was probably the greatest sex symbol of the 20th century, not one of them has managed to penetrate the mystery or fill the lacuna in our knowledge of Monroe’s final days at Cal-Neva.
And yet these days contain vital clues to her tragic end. Monroe was certainly in a dreadful state at the time. Robert Kennedy – who had inherited Monroe as a mistress from his brother, President John F. Kennedy – had just ended their five-month affair when she took off for Cal-Neva, and the last weekend of her life.

Buddy Greco recalls of her demeanour later that weekend: ‘She was fragile, very fragile – well, she’d gone.’ Many blamed the Kennedys.
‘Marilyn was distraught and heartbroken. She felt the Kennedys had handed her around like a piece of meat,’ Rupert Allan, her publicist and one of her last true Hollywood friends, had said earlier.
Her grip on reality – already weakend by mental illness, drink and drugs – was certainly shaky. How else to explain the fact that she had persuaded herself Bobby really would divorce the mother of his seven children.

As the attorney general of the United States, a member of the most famous Catholic family in the land and a politician who had just been named Father of the Year, he was never likely to run off with a thrice married Hollywood sex symbol. When the penny dropped, Monroe felt abused. She had always known how to stage a scene to get what she wanted and she had threatened the Kennedys.
‘If I don’t hear from Bobby Kennedy soon I’m going to call a press conference and blow the lid off this whole damn thing – I’m going to tell about my relationships with both Kennedy brothers,’ she told Robert Slatzer, an ex-lover, a few days earlier. Those close to Monroe knew that this was no idle threat. It had been a bad time for Monroe. She was hurt and wanted revenge, as only a spoiled movie star could.
A few weeks earlier, she had also been publicly humiliated by 20th Century Fox’s studio boss Peter G. Levathes.

Fed up with her chronic absenteeism – in 35 days of filming, she had turned up a dozen times and when she did arrive she was so heavily medicated she could not remember her lines – he had fired her from Something’s Got to Give, the film she was making with Dean Martin. He also issued a $500,000 breach-of-contract suit against her and replaced her with Lee Remick.
Although her lawyers were in the middle of patching things up with the studio and were confident that Something’s Got To Give would resume filming in the last week of August, with Monroe reinstated, she was still drinking heavily and bingeing on pills. Of course, she could still shine when she wanted to. But by now her gloss was too often just a thin veneer. Despite her depression, she initially appeared in good shape when she arrived at Cal-Neva, after flying there on Sinatra’s private plane.

‘When she arrived that Saturday, you’d never believe that she had a care in the world,’ recalls Buddy Greco. ‘I was sitting with Frank [Sinatra], Peter Lawford and a bunch of other people, outside Frank’s bungalow, when a limousine pulls up and this gorgeous woman in dark glasses steps out,’ he says.
‘She’s dressed all in green – everything green: coat, skirt and scarf. Before I realised who it was, I thought: “My God, what a beautiful woman. No taste in clothes, but what a beautiful woman!”
‘I knew that she’d been to my concerts and shows. She was a regular at the Crescendo club in Hollywood where I often played. It has been suggested that Sinatra invited Monroe to Cal-Neva Lodge to urge her to keep her mouth shut about her affairs with the Kennedy brothers’
‘We’d said hello a few times, but were never properly introduced. When Frank introduced us, I said: “You won’t remember me, but I was the piano player when you auditioned for the Benny Goodman band in 1948.”
‘She got emotional at that and hugged me. She had such warmth – and I was moved. Somebody took some wonderful shots of that moment, of us hugging.’

Indeed, Greco still has six black and white prints from a roll of film taken over the course of that weekend. He had kept more in a safety deposit box at the World Trade Center, but they were lost in the 9/11 terror attacks. ‘The people in those pictures were among the great entertainers of our time – Marilyn, Frank, Dean Martin,’ says Greco. ‘It was an unrepeatable moment, a time that would never happen again. July 1962.’
But by the end of the first evening, a darker Monroe was beginning to emerge. Greco had finished his first performance in the hotel’s lounge and had joined Sinatra and the other guests at Sinatra’s regular table.
‘It was a wonderful time, a magical weekend. It is so hard to describe now but it was maybe the best time of my life. Then suddenly the room went silent and very still. It was surreal. As if somebody had turned the sound off. I looked at Frank. I could immediately tell he was furious. His eyes were like blue ice cubes. He was looking at the doorway where Marilyn was stood, swaying ever so slightly.’
Given her history of chronic alcohol and drug abuse, it was an ominous sign. Indeed, Sinatra had fallen out with Monroe over her addictions before. He had opened the refurbished Cal-Neva just a month earlier and Monroe had got blind drunk on that occasion, too. He had tried to help and she still held him in high esteem, but Sinatra was tiring of her antics.
‘She was still in the same green outfit she’d worn all day,’ says Greco. ‘But the woman I’d met that afternoon – smart , funny, intelligent, fragile – had gone. Now she looked drunk and, well, defiant. She was clearly angry and I think I heard her say: “Who the f*** are they all staring at?”‘ Sinatra – who was obviously irritated by her erratic behaviour – acted fast. ‘It was clear Sinatra was worried. She was in a state where she could have said anything,’ says Greco.

This would have been a major concern for many of those around the table. Monroe, after all, knew an awful lot of secrets – and, in her condition, might have been prepared to share them. ‘Sinatra motioned to his bodyguard – Coochie – to get her out of there. Coochie, a big guy, escorted her out. Actually, he picked her up and carried her out. It wasn’t the star we were used to seeing.’
The incident upset Buddy Greco. He had felt such warmth and vulnerability in her only a few hours earlier and could not understand how she had changed so terribly and suddenly.
‘She was on my mind,’ he says. ‘I was worried about her. I went outside to find out whether she was okay. I knew that she had taken accidental overdoses in the past. I found her by the pool. There was nobody around. It was late and the pool was deserted. Maybe it was the moon but she had a ghostly pallor. It still didn’t occur to me that she might be a woman not long for this world. She was distressed, out of it, but that was all. Maybe her friends were used to seeing her like that but it worried me. Anyway, we talked. I walked her back to her bungalow in the complex reserved for the guests of Frank and Giancana where we all stayed. I thought that the next morning I could put her with Pat Lawford [the Kennedys' sister], who was her companion, and make sure she got back to L.A. safely. But the next day when I called, she had already left. That was the last time I saw her.’ So does he think that Sinatra had finally lost patience with Monroe and by abandoning her had left her to her fate?
‘That’s a possible scenario,’ Greco answered thoughtfully. ‘After she had created that problem, he certainly wanted her out of there. He could be quite firm with her.’

Indeed, it has been suggested that Sinatra had invited Monroe to Cal-Neva Lodge that weekend to urge her to keep her mouth shut about her affairs with the Kennedy brothers. The question is: had he already succeeded when he told her to go? Or given it up as a bad job – and thrown her back to the wolves?
Either way, after being ejected out of that bar by one of her closest friends, the clock was already ticking. And within five days, she was dead.

Marilyn’s last home up for sale

Marloes — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:41:40 +0000

The Brentwood house in the Los Angeles suburb, once owned by Marilyn Monroe and where she has died, is up for sale for $3.6 million.
The house that was built in 1929 in a Spanish colonial style is 2,624-square-foot one-story house built. It has four bedrooms, three baths and a swimming pool.

You can find more pictures and details on the house on the website of real estate agent David Offer.

Marilyn’s X-ray’s worth $45000

Marloes — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:57:20 +0000

Marilyn Monroe’s chest x-ray has fetched 45000 dollars at auction. A set of three Monroe chest X-rays, has been received from a hospital to which she paid a visit in 1954, reports CBS news. The X-Ray was auctioned at the Hollywood Legends auction at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

Julien’s Auctions, which sold the X-rays, estimated that they would only fetch a total of about 3,000 dollars, but to their surprise it fetched more than expected. Other Monroe-abilia that was sold included a chair from her last photo shoot that was auctioned for 35,000 dollars.

The image was produced in November 1954 at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Florida, USA. She has her hands on her hips and the outline of her bust can be made out. The actress had been admitted for surgery for endometriosis, a condition of the womb which caused her a lot of physical pain.

Film footage shows her leaving the hospital two days after the X-ray was taken, looking unkempt. She was still married at the time to American baseball star Joe Di Maggio although the couple had split and were going through divorce proceedings. Two months earlier she filmed her famous scene from classic movie Seven Year Itch where a warm air vent billows her white dress up around her waist. The x-ray carries her married name of Marilyn Di Maggio.

A young doctor working in the hospital’s radiology department later obtained the x-rays and when he taught at the centres medical school , used to show it to students. It later passed to his daughter who has put it up for sale.

Manager Darren Julien said: “There should be a lot of interest as it is the ultimate look into the legend.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Marilyn’s writing to be published as book, called ‘Fragments’

Marloes — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:35:25 +0000

It’s like a dream coming true: Marilyn Monroe’s writing will be published as a book! In the fall of 2010 the book, that will carry the title ‘Fragments’, will come out. The writings are the estate of Anna Strasberg, the wife of late Lee Strasberg who was Marilyn’s friend and acting coach.

Below you can read what Reuters (press agency) wrote about it.

By Sophie Taylor Sophie Taylor – Wed Apr 28, 11:37 am ET

PARIS (Reuters) – Blonde icon. Sex goddess. Glamour queen. Marilyn Monroe was many things to many people, but one thing she was rarely taken for was a writer.

Now French and American publishers have compiled a collection of previously unseen diary entries, jottings and poems which were inherited by Anna Strasberg, widow of Lee Strasberg, Monroe’s friend and acting instructor.
To be published by Editions du Seuil in France and U.S. publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October, the book — “Fragments” — reveals Monroe’s intellectual side and her frustration with being cast as a sex object.

At a dinner in late 2008, French publisher Bernard Comment learned of the existence of the collection of writings by Monroe which date from 1943 up until her death in 1962.
The impression given by Monroe’s writing, he said, is that of a delicate, introspective person whose train of thought could veer all over the page.
“There is a certain melancholy tone throughout the book, and what is very beautiful in some of the notes is the way you see the association between ideas, even if they are quite scattered all over the page,” said Comment, editor at Editions du Seuil.
“They go in all directions and it can be sometimes quite difficult to find order within the fragments,” Comment told Reuters in an interview, adding that the writing bordered at times on self-psychoanalysis.

Need to write

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortensen, personified 1950s glamour and went through a string of high-profile relationships — including a marriage to playwright Arthur Miller and rumored affairs with Robert and John F. Kennedy.
Among her best-known movies are The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
The final years of Monroe’s life were marred by illness and personal problems. The circumstances of her death, at 36, are still the subject of speculation.
It was often in the wake of an emotional event, or when faced with a dilemma, that Monroe put pen to paper, Comment said.
“I think that not only did she enjoy, but she also felt the need (to write), to sort out her life and try to put down the extremely acute feelings that she could have in reaction to certain situations,” he said.

The book puts each piece of writing into chronological order, accompanied by a series of photos of the iconic actress. Some of the jottings date from as early as 1943 but most of which were written between 1951 to 1962.
While Monroe’s writings shed no light on ongoing mysteries — such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example — they do reveal Monroe’s misgivings about taking on acting roles which consistently cast her as the “dumb blonde,” Comment said.
“(Her writing) helps to illuminate her character and gives her an intellectual and literary substance that many people did not suspect.” (Reporting by Sophie Taylor and Reuters Television)

Photos of Marilyn and poet Carl Sandberg up for sale

Marloes — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:29:00 +0000

I’ve come across some articles that say that new photographs of Marilyn are found and now up for sale. I looked at the pictures but as far as I know, these aren’t new. Now I’m wondering if I’m wrong…

Anyway, the photographs are indeed amazing and I love how Marilyn looks in them.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Photographs of Marilyn Monroe appearing relaxed and lounging around a New York apartment nine months before she died were unveiled on Friday after being held in a private archive for more than 45 years.

Photographer Len Steckler shot the black-and-white images of Monroe when she unexpectedly arrived at his apartment in December, 1961, to visit his friend, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Carl Sandburg. Steckler is offering them for a sale as a limited edition series called “Marilyn Monroe: The Visit.”

The pictures to be sold — four single images and two triptychs, or pictures in three parts — show Monroe wearing pointed, thick-rimmed sunglasses and a short sleeve dress while talking and laughing with Sandburg. Also offered will be 250 prints of each piece.

“It was serendipitous with these two icons in their moment and me there with my camera,” Steckler told Reuters, saying he was “like a fly on the wall” while he shot Monroe, then 35, and Sandburg, 83, while they chatted and held hands.

Steckler, a former commercial fashion and beauty photographer who is now “about 80″ and lives in Los Angeles, said on the afternoon Monroe visited, Sandburg had mentioned in a casual manner that they would soon have “a visitor.”

“Hours later I went to open the door and there I was face to face with Marilyn Monroe, and she looked more ravishing than on the screen,” he said. “She said ‘I am sorry I am late. I was at the hairdressers, matching my hair to Carl’s.’”

Monroe’s hair does indeed appear like Sandburg’s in the pictures, almost white, said Steckler, and he added that after he took the photos, they all drank Jack Daniels whiskey.

“As we know, Marilyn loved older men, she loved the intellectuals — and Carl was very parental with her,” said Steckler. “It was a lovely thing to see.”

The actress died in August, 1962, and Sandburg, who won Pulitzer prizes for his poetry and for a biography of Abraham Lincoln, died seven years later.

Michelle Williams in talks to play Marilyn in new biopic

Marloes — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:32:25 +0000

A few months ago it was reported that Scarlett Johansson was leading a list of actress under consideration to play Marilyn Monroe in director Simon Curtis’ biopic, My Week with Marilyn. Kate Hudson, Amy Adams and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) were also mentioned as possible contenders for the role.

Production Weekly has now learned that Johansson is out of the running and that its Williams who is in-talks with Curtis to top line the movie, set to begin lensing in June, 2010.

My Week will be based on the diary of Colin Clark, an employee of Laurence Olivier, who looked after Monroe when she came to London to film Olivier’s “The Prince and the Showgirl” in 1957. Although Colin was technically considered the third assistant director, his unofficial role was to keep Monroe out of Olivier’s way.

Clark published excerpts of his diary a year later, but left out the details of one week. Those unreleased chapters form the basis of the movie.

Frankly, it’s probably one of the toughest roles to cast. Monroe’s body movements, mannerisms and vocal inflections are legendary. Difficult to master, impersonators who have done so typically haven’t looked that much like the late actress. Alternatively, those who look somewhat like Monroe have more often than not had a tough time duplicating her essence. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out…and if Curtis decides to employ today’s current state-of-the art CG to give his leading lady a little extra “authenticity,” or if he simply allows her to develop a close individual interpretation of the Monroe essence, sans special effects.

Source: Cinemaspy.com

New rare footage of Marilyn

Marloes — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:47:58 +0000

I just love it when rare images or footage of Marilyn is found. Such has happened today, when I came across a video with Marilyn in it, sitting with friends, smoking a cigarette, laughing, having fun. Although many sources say the footage is from the late 50′s, I’m certain it’s from around 1954, looking at her hair and general appearance.
Enjoy!

As read on the CNN website:

Los Angeles, California (CNN) — The copyright to a home movie of Marilyn Monroe “just sitting around” with friends will be offered through an online auction this week, according to a man who found the film while researching the actress’ death.

A short clip of the four-minute, silent 16 mm film provided to CNN to shows Monroe puffing on a cigarette, laughing and drinking wine on a couch.
An FBI agent involved in the investigation of Monroe’s death on August 5, 1962 — which was ruled a suicide by drug overdose — tipped off collector Keya Morgan to the film’s existence. Morgan was interviewing the agent for a documentary titled “Marilyn Monroe: Murder at 5th Helena Drive,” he said.
The documentary, due out next year, examines the theory that Monroe was killed by government agents because of her affair with President John F. Kennedy. Morgan said he paid $275,000 for the faded color film because it is “very rare” to find images of the actress’ private moments.

“It’s a side of Marilyn that no one has ever seen before,” he said. “You see the private Norma Jeane, the girl. You don’t see Marilyn Monroe, the movie star.” Monroe changed her name from Norma Jeane Baker to Marilyn Monroe early in her acting and modeling career.While she puffs the cigarette, “she’s also sniffing her armpit and acting silly,” Morgan said.

The woman who made the film asked that CNN use only her first name, Gretchen, to protect her identity. “We were just getting together,” Gretchen said. They were “just sitting around” in a New Jersey apartment, singing songs, she said. The film was made in the late 1950s; Gretchen said she could not recall the exact year. She kept it packed away for 50 years, except for loaning it to FBI investigators, she said.

Gretchen retained the copyright, which Morgan is helping her sell through an eBay auction expected to begin Thursday, he said.

Bid For Crypt Above Marilyn Monroe Falls Through

Marloes — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:21:33 +0000

By Ina Jaffe

People will spend a lot of money to live near the rich and famous. For the dead and famous, arguably no neighborhood is more desirable than the mausoleum at the Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles.

Among the many stars resting there is the iconic Marilyn Monroe, and the crypt directly above hers was recently auctioned on eBay. A Japanese man bid more than $4.6 million to spend eternity as Monroe’s upstairs neighbor. But the Los Angeles Times reports that he reneged on the deal in an e-mail, saying, “I need to cancel this because of the paying problem.”

The current occupant of the crypt is Richard Poncher, who died 23 years ago at the age of 81. In accordance with his wishes, he was entombed face down, above the movie star.

His widow, Elsie Poncher, wants to sell his crypt to pay off the mortgage on her house. She’ll then move him into an adjacent crypt that she owns.

Poncher’s attorney told NPR that the next step depends on what they hear from eBay about the qualifications of bidders. A dozen people bid for the space above Monroe.

The tomb right next to Monroe’s is owned by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

It seems to be the same for Monroe in death as in life, when she complained to Groucho Marx in Love Happy:

“I want you to help me,” Monroe says.

“I have a little sand left. What seems to be the trouble?” Groucho asks.

“Some men are following me,” Monroe replies.

Groucho responds, “Really? I can’t understand why.”

Just an exclusive few will be able to follow Monroe into eternity — and at least one will pay a bundle for the chance.