"Norma Jean and Marilyn", by British director Tim Fywell first appeared as an exclusive made-for-TV movie on HBO in 1996. It is the first biopic on Marilyn Monroe (192... more >
"Norma Jean and Marilyn", by British director Tim Fywell first appeared as an exclusive made-for-TV movie on HBO in 1996. It is the first biopic on Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) to actually portray the star's complex psychology with two personalities: Norma Jean, the auburn-haired, ambitious model who predicated Marilyn the star, and Marilyn Monroe, a blonde sex symbol who, transformed by Hollywood, was created and destroyed by the industry and image she was never able to escape.
This film does not successfully intertwine Marilyn's selves. Rather than being a manipulated addict as ultimately it would have you to believe, as a performer, Marilyn actually was in command of the making of her image: the image was not in command of her. Marilyn as an icon was exactly what that word suggests: a timeless figure who embodied the cultural standard for Hollywood at that time.
Nevertheless, as a human being and passionate artist, tragedy did follow her and the actual circumstances surrounding her death will always be in question. This film attempts to outline Marilyn Monroe's life from an abandoned child to a famous actress who was fueled by survival instinct and ambition and rose to the top of the movie industry in the 1950's with calculated business acumen and a vulnerable innocent charm. This combination of qualities would prove to be exhausting and deadly for her, and this is the point of the film's use of two different, conflicting personalities that literally battled for her soul.
Blonde Ambition: Norma Jean
At the opening of the film, Norma Jean (Ashley Judd) is around age 19 or 20, sitting nude in a church. Everyone around her is dressed formally, seeming not to notice her. Filmed in dreamy slow motion, this sequence is a recurring dream she describes in a voice-over as she deliberately rises, walks, and kneels for communion. Norma Jean is completely comfortable in the nude, and this establishes the psychological basis for her comfort with and the later exploitation of her beautiful body.
This Norma Jean will emerge as Marilyn's polar opposite. She is played deftly by Ashley Judd who, with the real Norma Jean's natural reddish-brown hair color, nubile body, and cherubic face, is quite convincing as a young woman aware of her sexuality and fiery natural ambition. Once discovered as a pin-up model, she develops a fierce motivation to act and star in Hollywood movies. The film makes effective use of Judd who consistently personifies the ambitious Norma Jean throughout, the dialogue and characterization emphasizing a young actress driven for success. Judd spiritedly uses her own sex appeal and range to personify the character from a coy purring seductress to shameless self-promoting model. With the nymph-like freedom and daring of a 1940’s pin-up girl, she poses in the film for sensual shots recreating, for example, the infamous trademark calendar-shot against red velvet. Judd commands scenes such as this, preening and primping in pin-up style completely sincere and palatably sexual.
Some of the film's dialogue is based on the autobiography "My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe", written by actor and Marilyn's friend Ted Jordan (played by Josh Charles). Although some of this book may have been fictional in itself, it borrows from Jordan's recollection of her as a wanna-be starlet as tough words spew from Norma Jean's mouth: "I'm gonna be a star if I have to f--- everybody in Hollywood to get there", she confides in him firmly while sitting in a car outside the movie studios. As Norma Jean learns the ropes of the studio system she ends up using Ted (or “Eddie”), leaving him incredulous as her persona becomes more and more ruthless, climbing the ladder to flirt and bed her way through the politics of the male-dominated movie studio system.
Haunted ever by her childhood as an orphan and feelings of abandonment, visions of orphanages, foster families, and a mentally unstable mother flash before Norma Jean eyes. These scenes occur as she steels herself for stardom, wanting to forget rejection and molestation, while at the same time an underlying drive for love and notoriety pulls at the recesses of her mind. Black-and-white flashback sequences appear as she submits to several physical changes including hair-bleaching to change her hairstyle from the frizzy reddish mane to the now-famous blonde coif, and electrolysis and cosmetic surgery that permanently altered her appearance (“Blonde photographs better, Norma Jean”, an agent once told the starlet).
The final scene featuring Judd as the girlish pre-Marilyn is as she lay on a doctor’s table. Her mentor and lover, movie mogul Johnny Hyde (Ron Rifkin) orders changes to her jawline and nose. The surgeon impersonally marks lines across her face. “We’ll make incisions here, and here”...and as the knife pierces her skin, the scene fades to black. In a greyish daydream, a little girl waves at a car that revs away into the horizon. Suddenly, the driver stops and backs up, heading faster and faster toward the little girl. The adult Norma Jean grimaces as she pushes the pedal down; the little girl startled and shocked, watches helplessly. In a final symbolic act of killing an old self, the little orphan girl is slaughtered as Norma Jean dies for good and Marilyn is born.
Birth and Death of a Star: Marilyn
This is where the film leaves out many events and nuances that contribute to Marilyn’s transformation. In the next scene we see a mysterious blonde woman sitting in front of a director. A breathless voice whispers to the man behind the desk, who plays around with new names, pseudonyms for someone yet without a full identity. They toss them back and forth, as though her new identity were a game. Finally the man smiles. “How about Marilyn Monroe?”, he says. Sensing her hesitation, he recants. “Is that all right with you, Norma Jean?”
The camera closes in on the woman’s face (Mira Sorvino). She smiles and flirts coyly with her eyes. Red lips part and she breathes, acquiesing to the new name gently.
“Who?,” she answers.
From here and throughout the story, Marilyn played by Mira Sorvino is a lost woman who has lost a large part of her drive and direction. The use of two actresses so different in physical appearance makes the film less convincing and disrupts the continuity as much as the sudden death of the strong Norma Jean persona and the revelation of a weaker confused Marilyn. Unfortunately, the story as told in this film is tragic even before the death of the star. The writers over-simplify Marilyn Monroe, once famous, while inserting her tyrannical and critical alter ego Norma Jean (still played by Judd) as a phantom that tortures her in scenes where she is privately vulnerable and frightened.
In a part rehearsing lines for a movie, Marilyn forgets what she is supposed to say. Embarrassed and apologetic, she runs from the stage into a bathroom where Norma Jean appears. Crouched alone by a toilet, Marilyn cowers from Norma Jean’s tirade. In scenes such as this, she cries, cowers and battles with herself: Marilyn, a glamorous Hollywood movie actress and Norma Jean, the ambitious calculating ego hardened by survival and steel will. The use of this technique is meant to draw the line between Marilyn’s two personas, leaving one half tortured, addicted, and helpless, and one half hating the other while mercilessly demanding more and more of her abilities.
As Marilyn, Mira Sorvino is at the mercy of a script that paints the actress as a literal dumb blonde, as though cosmetic alteration and a change of voice inflection also wiped out her brain. As in many “biographical” movies on Marilyn, she is portrayed as a victim to powerful men and the movie machine, rather than taking an intelligent part in her choices of image, role selection, business decisions, and lovers. In the dramatic attempt to delineate the two sides of a troubled woman, and without blending them into a consistent whole, this storyline perpetuates the stereotype that it could have deconstructed. While attempting to provide insight into an icon’s complex psychology, the movie falls into the pattern of simplification of her career that the real Marilyn Monroe dreaded, yet what is to be expected of Hollywood, then and now?
Among the saving qualities of this portrayal of Marilyn is Sorvino’s dead-on vocal imitation of Marilyn, although it is much better in spoken lines than in songs. In a sequence of events that led to her mass appeal and fame, some of Marilyn's career highlights are recreated, challenging Sorvino to recapture some of Marilyn's star essence. In the "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" number (from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), Sorvino replicates every movement and wiggle and sings in her own voice. With crowds applauding in the background and cameras flashing, a surreal montage recreates Marilyn's career highlights: The publicity scene from the "Seven Year Itch", her dress blowing upward, and the honor of Marilyn getting her concrete slab on Hollywood Boulevard with Jane Russell. Her marriages to Joe Dimaggio (Peter Dodson) and Arthur Miller (David Dukes) are touched on superficially, marked by the jealousy and bitter arguments that urged them toward divorce.
Sorvino,with the one-note limitation of the script, successfully embodies Marilyn’s vulnerable side, although as a woman always teetering on the edge of destruction the core of that portrayal centers on Marilyn the sexually exploited woman, the pill addict, the emotionally needy actress. When confronted with struggle, with loss, with painful memories, and the menacing reappearance of Norma Jean, she turns to pills and champagne, tearful episodes, suicide attempts, and psychiatrists who prescribed more pills. Eventually, Marilyn/Norma Jean the person can stand no more, and the career of Marilyn the star fades into history with her tragic death.
Conclusion
This modern version of a biographical sketch of one of Hollywood’s most famous women may leave the viewer saddened, sympathetic, enlightened, or unconvinced that Marilyn is worthy of the fame her career spawned. For those unfamiliar with her life, it will provide more insight into her childhood and young womanhood than her actual movie career. Although the highlights of her life after stardom are fairly accurate, the frustrating tragic elements of the persona created in the film detract from the enigma and delight that Marilyn Monroe was and is in the minds and hearts of millions today.
Holes in the Script/What’s Missing
Marilyn’s Tour of Korea and Singing to the Troops is not in the movie.
Scenes of her death are not based on how she was actually found.
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