This is one of the most amazing books on Marilyn Monroe and tells the story of her life as she told it to George Barris just a few weeks before her death. Marilyn was by now at a crossroads in her life and this was her reflection on her life so far.
She had been through a lot of turmoil during the last two years of her life but had kept going and was coming out the other side… you can’t help wondering why Fox had treated her so shabbily during those final months when making, Something’s Got To Give. They must have known how vulnerable and emotionally fragile she was and yet instead of trying to help her they fired her…How awful for Marilyn, to be abandoned once more, she must have felt like the young Norma Jeane being hauled unwillingly into the orphanage.
But she had her supporters this time and one of them was George Barris.
Marilyn opens her heart in this book and we see her as a very human character, raw and very tender from her recent ordeals. She is very honest and perhaps reveals to us a Marilyn we have never seen before, the private side which only a very few would have been privileged to see up ’til then.
These photographs are magnificent, a study in photographing people in general and women particularly, and technically astounding. The colour images, almost certainly shot on the Kodachrome of the vintage, and thirty-some years old when the book was prepared for litho, have a lovely vintage tonality. A great model, a great photographer, great cameras and films, and some beautiful scenery in Southern California all add up to photos that would be worthwhile even if Marilyn had never been famous and were still alive baking cookies in Ohio.
The photos are unlike any that were taken before, in total contrast to the recent shoot with Bert Stern, these photos reveal a more natural side, often with very little make-up and hair undone. I think they’re very poignant to Marilyn’s state of mind, she looks so open, ready for the world, older but wiser than before: “As far as I’m concerned, the happiest time of my life is now.
There’s a future, and I can’t wait to get to it. It should be interesting. “It almost seems unbelievable that time was running out for Marilyn, there was so much promise left, a great actress was emerging and one can only surmise what she would have become had she survived that fateful night in August.A truly outstanding book and one I would highly recommend.
By Fraser Penney
