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Forever blonde

She has a million imitators, and yet, the Marilyn Monroe mystique remains unmatched. Everything about the original blonde worked for her fans, finds out RAKESH MEHAR as her death anniversary passes by

They say in the movies, where names and faces come and go by the million, you're only as good as your last picture. Yet, there have always been those rare figures that have achieved the elusive goal of transcending barriers of time, space and culture to become universally remembered as icons for all time. And no one managed it better than the original blonde, Marilyn Monroe, as cineastes from the other side of the world in little old Bengaluru testify.

It has been more than four decades since Monroe's mysterious suicide at the height of her career, and yet, news about her refuses to die down. Recently, for instance, Paris Hilton — the self-styled heiress of all things trashy — recently made an attempt to usurp the legendary actress's crown claiming she was this decade's iconic blond.

Many would consider this a reasonable claim, since much of Monroe's success is commonly attributed to her ability to look gorgeous more than anything else. Like Premchand, representative of Paramount Films and of 20th Century Fox prior to that, who first got hooked to Monroe when he saw what is regarded her best work, Some Like It Hot. He believes there is little to say about her acting skills, but plenty about her ability to keep the men entertained. "She was just a glamorous doll who drove men crazy," he says.

Hilton's statement might even be valid in the context of the belief many others hold that much of the hullabaloo about Monroe is just media hype. Cheriyan Alexander, one of the city's well-known English professors, points out that only a small niche of middle-class Indians experienced the first wave of Monroe films before all of the media attention was created. "I don't know whether the response is natural because you are supposed to like her," he explains. As much as detractors try to rationalise the reasons for such strong sentiment, however, even the biggest sceptic eventually admits: "There is something very unusual about her."

Anything more than a casual glance at her life reveals that much. As theatre person C.R. Simha points out, the tag of beauty without brains is undeserved in the case of Monroe. Beneath the cultivated dumb blonde persona, he says, there seemed to be a strong intellectual streak the public chose to ignore. "She wanted to break away from that image, and once she was a celebrity, she even went to Lee Strasberg's acting school and took lessons (on The Method)." Strasberg's school has, over the years, included a long line of acting heavyweights including Marlon Brando. Moreover, he adds, she was married to playwright Arthur Miller, an intellectual giant. "Her image was just one part of her persona," says the veteran performer who first saw her in the thriller Niagara, and has always thought of her one of the most stunning women he has ever seen.

For many fans, the on-screen Monroe was just as much of a great watch as the off-screen one. Journalist Bhavani G., for example, disagrees with critics who claim that Monroe was never much of an actor. "She was limited by her times," protests Bhavani. "You can see the way she stole Laurence Olivier's thunder in The Prince and the Showgirl."

Indeed, even feminists who might take objection to the clichéd portrayals that Monroe often essayed, also admit that she was empowered in real life, "enacting the proto-feminism of the mid-20th Century transitional woman" as an article on her on americanpopculture.com says. The piece goes on to say that although Monroe was mired in the ideology of the past, she also displayed real agency by divorcing unsupportive husbands, fighting for her modelling and film success, taking acting classes even after becoming a big star, starting her own production company, and even jogging and lifting weights to keep her figure when the practice wasn't in fashion. In fact, Monroe once even famously intervened to ensure that Ella Fitzgerald, whom she greatly admired, became the first black performer at a venue called the Mocambo Club.

That, says Bhavani, was perhaps Monroe's greatest achievement, that she so successfully subverted the child-woman image that was constantly applied to her. "If she had been a formidably intelligent woman like Meryl Streep, she would never have got the status she did."

As the article on americanpopculture.com points out, as people sort out the distortions from the facts of Monroe's life, "they may be left like Mr. Esmond at the end of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes saying in dazed wonder to the spirit of Marilyn Monroe, `Say... they told me you were stupid. You don't sound stupid to me.'"

Look out for...

Arguably the finest film of Monroe's career was Billy Wilder's cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot, co-starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. This finely crafted comedy is about as good as the genre gets, and is often compared to the Marx Brothers, and even gets an upper hand on them with its wonderful musical interludes. Coming in a close second is her other great hit, Seven Year Itch. This is the film that immortalised Monroe forever, featuring the scene in which she stands over a heating grate and her skirt billows up displaying a pair of exceptionally perfect legs. Also in the same vein, though not as memorable, is her gold digger routine with Jane Russell for company in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This film yielded that famous number, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend", which Madonna recreates in the video of "Material Girl".

For her more serious attempts at acting, The Misfits is the best place to go. Written by Arthur Miller, who divorced Marilyn just before it was released and also starring Clark Gable, the film has a wonderful eye for detailAlso check out the thriller Niagara, the comedy How To Marry A Millionaire and the better-than-average Laurence Olivier-starrer The Prince And The Showgirl.

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