Marilyn Monroe at 100

Today is the 100th birthday of Ms. Norma Jeane Mortensen, better known as Marilyn Monroe.

We're fans of Monroe here at The Signal Watch, and whether that's because of her film work - and she's terrific in most of the work I've seen, or knowing her as an icon of the 20th Century - I don't know.  She was gone more than twenty years before I really understood who she was..  But even when it's a movie I don't love (see: The Seven Year Itch), or something far greater than I expected (Some Like It Hot, The Misfits), she is what they say, and few talents before or since have come anywhere near her place in the zeitgeist.  

There's no one else left, really, from this era of film that I think today's young adults and youths would readily recognize.  And even then, they may not even know she was an actress - she's simply a face on a t-shirt.  I don't know.  But she remains an icon, maybe an ethereal one at this point, but someone still seen as a sign of glamour.  We can save our comments about how some trash celebrities try and tried to steal some of her light.

I think the oddest thing is how you can put anyone in platinum hair and cherry lipstick and try to make them Marilyn - but no one else is her.  That's how oddly singular Monroe is.  She had her competitors in her day - Mansfield, Van Doren, and even some like Joi Lansing or Diana Dors in the UK.  And I'd never dismiss any of them, but you know what agents and managers are hoping to recreate.  And in the past decades, we've had a few biopics and whatnot - beautiful actresses putting the dye in their hair, working on the voice...  But it's never quite right, is it?  

In addition to the movies, both well received and otherwise, Monroe might as well have her own designation in the Library of Congress catalog system, they've written so many books about her.  She was a muse for Warhol, and even in the 90's, she was a staple for pin-ups in young men's rooms (ask me how I know).

To some extent, I think her fame has been to the detriment of the legacy of other actors.  She made only 29 movies or so, and passed at 36 - other actors had 29 credits before they were 25.  She was notoriously difficult on set.  And I think it's fair to say there were talents who excelled hers, but who simply didn't have her inner spark.  But even the Lana Turners with their own histories of scandal mixed with glamour are names for classic film fans, where Monroe is known by billions of people.  We don't do a very good job of remembering the actors who came before.*

Enough time has passed that the revelations about Monroe's life - be it the drug abuse, the bad behavior on set, possibly sleeping with a sitting President - we can agree that happened, and still see the person underneath.  A curious mind, someone with a lot of insecurities who tried to improve herself even as cameras flashed in her face non-stop.  And, we can appreciate what has endured on film.  

*it's a crime y'all aren't on the Jane Russell train, or that we don't talk more about Stanwyck