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Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe
Summary
Marilyn Monroe, born to deprivation and a series of foster homes, became an acting legend of the twentieth century. She married famous men, Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, and her many lovers included President John F. Kennedy. Her death, at thirty-six, is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.
Anthony Summers interviewed 600 people for this book, which reveals unknown truths, some funny, some very sad, about this brilliant but troubled woman. First to gain access to the files of Monroe's last psychiatrist, he throws light on Monroe's troubled psyche and her addiction to medications. He establishes once and for all that she was intimately involved with John and Robert Kennedy, who probably covered up the circumstances of her death.
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Reviews
Anthony Summers provides an incredibly detailed biography of Marilyn Monroe's life and the mysteries surrounding her death. Summers conducted hundreds of interviews with Marilyn's friends and colleagues, and is careful to compare their various perspectives and to weigh each statement against other claims and known facts. The amount of research which went into this book is readily apparent, as Summers frequently provides quotations from articles and interviews that were conducted during Marilyn's life, and even includes reproductions of some letters and telegrams that she sent. Summers' voice is very professional - he is neither overly sympathetic nor overly critical of his subject, and the result paints a complex portrait of a woman who seemed to be a living mess of contradictions: she was obsessed with becoming a famous actress, but terrified of performing on set, she had an overwhelming need to be loved, but could not make any of her relationships last, she was famous as a sex goddess and yet, while she had many lovers, she rarely experienced orgasm. She was sometimes a shy little girl, Lauren Bacall described her as "...frightened, insecure...During our scenes she'd look at my forehead instead of my eyes. ...Not easy, often irritating. And yet I couldn't dislike Marilyn, she had no meanness in her.."(p.118) But she could be a bitchy prima donna, being chronically late, inventing reasons not to work and frustrating her co-stars. And despite an encyclopedic knowledge of health and the human body, she poisoned herself with drugs. Marilyn Monroe was far from a "dumb blonde" - she was constantly struggling to improve her skills and her mind, and devoured literature, history, philosophy and poetry. She adored children and animals, and cared deeply about poverty and civil rights. Yet she was so supersensitive that any hint of criticism was enough to grievously hurt her, and she was capable of discarding loyal friends and lovers in pursuit of her own interests. Summers' works to show each different facet of Marilyn's complex personality in this book - the result is intriguing and tragic. I also enjoyed the inclusion of various different impressions people had of Marilyn Monroe when they met her in person. For example, this highly magical and romantic description of seeing Marilyn in person came from Alice McIntyre of Esquire magazine:"...like nothing human you have ever seen or dreamed. She is astonishingly white, so radically pale that in her presence you can look at others about as easily as you can explore the darkness around the moon. Indeed, there seems the awful possibility in the various phases of her person that MM is a manifestation of the White Goddess herself: disdaining all lingerie and dressed in tight, white silk emblazoned with countless red cherries, she becomes at once a symbol of impartial and eternal availability, who yet remains forever pure - and a potentially terrible goddess whose instinct could also deal death and whose smile, when she directs it clearly at you, is exquisitely, heartbreakingly sweet." (p.259)