By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—This book falls within one of those between genres—historical fiction—in which it is difficult to tell what is real and what is made up. If you were writing a biography of Marilyn Monroe, you couldn’t reliably cite it, yet there is enough verisimilitude about the book that a reader feels he or she has really gained insight into the personality of Marilyn Monroe. Clearly author Alma h. Bond has done a lot of research.
Much of the book deals with the marriages of Marilyn, the movie star, to Joe DiMaggio, the baseball star, and later to Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. This was a case of the personification of one institution (the movies) marrying in turn the personifications of two other institutions—baseball and intellect. Neither man suited Marilyn—DiMaggio because she thought he was dumber than she was, and Miller because he thought exactly the same about her.
We also read about Marilyn’s numerous affairs with other famous men – President John F. Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, singer Frank Sinatra, and actor Yves Montand among them. Marilyn flaunted her sexuality, but didn’t want men to treasure her only for her body. She wanted them to love what was on her inside – as her parents never did – but she was so insecure about herself, and so demanding of other people’s unqualified love, that few people had the energy to constantly reassure her.
Marilyn often dreamed of suicide, occasionally attempted suicide, and eventually drugged herself to death. That someone who was an international icon—the embodiment of sexiness—could be so constantly miserable ought to make everyone reexamine the meaning of success.
In the book, Marilyn visits a fictional female psychiatrist and through sessions “on the couch” and in subsequent letters to her “shrink,” she reveals her biography. Her father abandoned her mother before the birth of Marilyn—whose childhood name was Norma Jeane Mortenson. Her mother was in and out of mental institutions, and thus was unable to give her the stability she needed growing up. Marilyn was moved from one foster home to another, and when foster parents abandoned her, she was sent to an orphanage. Finding someone to love her became the raison d’être of her life. The problem was that she was so darn sexy, she never could be sure that men really liked her for herself, or simply for the prestige of bedding her. As for women, she felt most of them were jealous of her. Marilyn was very lonely.
When she married Arthur Miller, Marilyn converted to Judaism, but regrettably there is very little in this book about that aspect of her life. The author dismisses the conversion as just another of Marilyn’s dalliances—a conversion that lasted perhaps two weeks. All that really came out of it was a decision by Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser to ban Marilyn’s films in his country. Marilyn didn’t care; she considered it a badge of honor.
The book is an interesting psychological study even if you have no basis to believe all of it. Apparently it is tough to be beautiful, and brutal to be extraordinarily beautiful.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com