I was expecting this book to be a bit like a who’s who in the life of Marilyn Monroe but sadly, it has very little connection with any of the people from Marilyn’s inner circle and instead is based purely on anecdotes from celebrity biographies and references to her published in other media formats, pieced together in an A to Z format, rather like a dictionary as it is presented in the book.
Once you get over that and the highly inflated price, it does have some interesting entries from the likes of such diverse people as Lillian Gish to Peter Sellers, Frank Lloyd Wright to Abba Eban, Jack Kerouac to Somerset Maugham to Timothy Leary to name but a few.
It also reports an encounter Marilyn had with the King of Rock when a couple of Elvis’ friends dared him to ask her out on a date. Elvis according to the source felt that Marilyn was out of his league but finally agreed to pursue this and met Marilyn coming out of her dressing room on soundstage 23 on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. She was clad in a bathrobe. Elvis politely introduced himself and asked Marilyn to accompany him to a party. Marilyn with equal politeness declined the offer.
The entries in this book all have sources listed at the back for further reading.
It is a handy book to own and if you are like me a love to check other film star biographies to see if there’s a reference to Marilyn then this book is for you as it has all the entries from them here.
By Fraser Penney
