The internet is full of photoshopped pictures of Marilyn. How do you tell which are real and which are fake? And why are photoshopped pictures so harmful both to Marilyn’s legacy and to her fans?
Race Relations
August 1972 article in MS magazine: “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt. It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo (who had refused to book Fitzgerald because she was black), and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard… After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.” – Ella Fitzgerald
The Brothers Karamazov, the last novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was published in 1880. It is a story of three brothers who become implicated in the murder of their corrupt father, also named Fyodor.
In 1953, Marilyn Monroe was the unofficial queen of Hollywood. Her last three movies had made her the most bankable of actresses, and she achieved her childhood dream of having her hand and footprints immortalised in cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
Jeanne Eagles – 1920s.
“Jeanne Eagels was the Marilyn Monroe of the 1920s: beautiful, blonde, talented, vulnerable and mercurial – and a complete and utter mess. Indeed, Marilyn was a model of emotional stability compared to Jeanne,” author Eve Golden wrote, in ‘Golden Images’ (2000.) Both actresses died young, and their lives have become mythical. But beyond the legend, what do these two women really have in common?
The US cable channel, Lifetime, is well-known – notorious, even – for producing a range of celebrity biopics, including Liz and Dick, a widely-panned film about the Taylor-Burton affair, starring Lindsay Lohan. Since then, features on Whitney Houston and others have been released. Despite critical disdain, Lifetime’s tabloid-friendly subjects continue to attract large audiences.
