Marilyn Monroe, had she lived that long, would have celebrated her 90th birthday June 1.
The mere thought of Monroe alive at 90 is as improbable as everything else about the life, times, career, loves and untimely death of the legendary American screen actress, superstar before the term was invented and sex symbol — a term that came into use mainly because of her and that embraces all kinds of feelings and thoughts about sex in America (before the 1960s rushed in and we said pretty much goodbye to all that).
Monroe lives on, of course, certainly in the minds and imaginations of people who were alive at the time of her death by a overdose of sleeping pills in 1962, and of those whose interest in her movies persists — along with tales of her fame and affairs, including one with then President John F. Kennedy.
Monroe’s life goes beyond achievement. It has aspects of legend, things we experienced or remember anew, old stories freshly told. Her movies remain enjoyable, some more than others, and probably none more than “Some Like It Hot,” Billy Wilder’s hilarious black-and-white comedy about two musicians who join a girl band, running from Roaring Twenties mobsters.
Every endearing — and daring — quality of Monroe was on display in exaggeration: her whispery voice, the way she moved and sang, her vulnerability and the sheer fun of watching her. She was not the girl next door or the downtown girl, either. She was something else.
In her time, Monroe was brand new. There had been sexy movie stars before — Jean Harlow comes to mind, and the pinup girl of World War II, Betty Grable. But in the 1950s, Monroe embodied a new kind of persona, an idea and ideal of sexuality, attractiveness and beauty. Her charm and that curvy body were natural and profoundly affecting on the minds of young small-town American boys who had never seen anyone like her, not next door, down the street or in the sitcom world of “Father Knows Best.”
She was also a natural comedienne and a troubled soul, almost from the beginning, a product of Hollywood and foster homes and a psyche frayed by bouts of addiction. She had talent that went beyond her looks; watch her goofy quality in “The Seven Year Itch,” singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” holding her own with Lauren Bacall and Grable in “How to Marry a Millionaire,” playing the showgirl in “Bus Stop.”
TMC Classic material, these are now old movies, a little too old by the standards of a world full of sex tapes, mass judgment on social media, things going viral in the night, overnight. In the post-war 1940s and 1950s, she exploded on the national consciousness like a friendly bomb. Her life story was taken up in other movies, plays and novels.
Famously, she posed for a nude calendar in full glory and it didn’t destroy her career. Famously, she heard the mighty roar of thousands of U.S. troops in Korea when she entertained them. “You never heard such cheering,” she told her husband, the Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio. “Yes, I have,” he reportedly said. She married both the great baseball star and the great playwright and intellectual Arthur Miller, who wrote a play about her called “After the Fall” and the screenplay for “The Misfits,” which would be her last movie and that of Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, too. She died at age 36.
It’s hard to imagine her in the here and now. But she remains unforgettable, stopped by time.
