BEFORE: Now I'm getting down to it, after tonight this year's Doc Block will be 80% over, so I just have to stave off Documentary Burn-Out for a few more days, then I can watch fiction films again, hurray! I'm in the "classic Hollywood" section right now, and after one baseball film I'll be in the 1950's and 1960's for a couple more films, then the path goes back through rock & roll for one last film about SNL/SCTV stars, and then I'm done. Really running out of days I have to figure out what I'm going to watch in September, but I've got a few free days next week to give that a whirl. And I've skipped a calendar day in order to make tonight's film line up with a birthday, see below.
This may seem like an unlikely choice for a U.S. state to associate with Marilyn Monroe, because I don't know if she ever went there, but through Google I found out that the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming has an archive of rare photographs and documents from her life and classic portrait sessions. Also, the ART 321 center in Casper, Wyoming has a 6-foot tall painted portrait of Marilyn created via a community fund-raising campaign. Marilyn also appeared as an extra in a square dance scene in a film titled "Green Grass of Wyoming", but I doubt the film was shot in Wyoming. Anyway, tonight's "Get to Know a State" state is WYOMING!
Date admitted to the U.S.: July 10, 1890 (44th state)
Claim to fame: Women's suffrage, I guess. First state to allow women to vote.
Nickname: Equality State, or Cowboy State
State Motto: "Equal Rights"
State Flower: Wyoming paintbrush
State Bird: Western meadowlark
State Fish: Cutthroat trout
State Animal: American bison
State Reptile: Horned toad
State Insect: Sheridan's green hairstreak butterfly
State Tree: Plains cottonwood
State Dinosaur: Triceratops
State Gemstone: Jade
Notable Sports Teams: None I can find, it's another place the state sport is rodeo.
Fun Facts: Despite being the tenth largest state in area, it's the least populated of all. Even teeny tiny Rhode Island has more people living in it than big old Wyoming. And the population there is kind of declining, workers have been leaving in droves for North Dakoka. The federal government owns over half of the land in Wyoming, which raises questions, like what are they even DOING with it? National parks, I guess? Less people, less available land, so I don't think it's a fun place to be unless you're really into mineral extraction.
Marilyn Monroe carries over from "Audrey" and I've got another posthumous Birthday SHOUT-out to Fidel Castro, born 8/13/26. Well he would have been 100 years old today if he hadn't died in 2016 or any year after that.
THE PLOT: Explores the mystery surrounding the death of movie icon Marilyn Monroe through previously unheard interviews with her inner circle.
AFTER: This feels like I've been tricked into watching a typical documentary about Marilyn that really adds nothing new to what we already knew about her and her mysterious death. They teased me at the beginning as if they were going to reveal her killer at the end, and then of course they did not, they're still left with the conclusion that it was a suicide or an accidental overdose. Of course, there's the possibility that somebody just WANTED it to look that way, but come on, guys, that was 64 years ago, if you don't have proof of foul play and you're bringing nothing new to the table, why even bother? Just let it be, we're all over it by now, don't you think?
I'll go ahead and tell you what they DO suggest, and that's the evidence based on a very wonky timeline of her last night, that she overdosed and was found alive, and brought via ambulance to a hospital, however she may have died in the ambulance, and then somebody thought it would be a great idea to bring her BACK home and stage her death there. If this is true, there's no real reason given for WHY it went down that way, what someone would have gained from doing this. There's an implication that the Kennedys, particularly Robert, might have been behind this, but again, no evidence so they can't just come right out and say that.
The rest of the doc, beyond this "revelation" that she might have died in an ambulance and not at home, is pretty basic stuff, based on recorded tapes of people interviewed by Anthony Summers (20 years or so after the fact) and also sessions Marilyn had with a psychotherapist, Ralph Greenson. A lot of Summers' research for his book was done by phone, so the recorded phone conversations are played here, with actors portraying the people talking on the phone and lip-syncing with what they said. If not for this, half of this movie would just be images of those tape recorder reels going around and around, like they did in "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes". Anyway, you're hearing the right words from the interviews, even if you're not seeing the people who said them. I suppose it's a way to go.
But being basic stuff, like going over the details of Marilyn's marriages to Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller, and then the break-ups with Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller, really places this in the same ballpark as my last two docs watched, about Liz Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. All of them were married at least twice, Marilyn actually three times (one was before she was famous) and of course Taylor had seven marriages to six men. It's not a competition by any means, but somehow Liz Taylor won, but also lost at the same time.
They don't go into much of Marilyn's pre-fame backstory, like that first marriage and working in a munitions factory during the war, which led a photographer to take some "Rosie the Riveter" style photos of her, and that led to her quitting the factory and taking more modeling work, and all that that entails. Pin-up work, magazine work, sometimes under her real name and sometimes under made-up names. And the modeling work led to acting work, as an extra in the background at first, but according to the interviewed casting director, there were ways to advance in the movie industry which mostly involved having sex with the casting directors. She got a contract with Fox and divorced her first husband, who was against her having a career.
She spent six months learning acting and dancing and singing, and observing the whole filmmaking process and the ways to get ahead. There were screen-tests and bit parts in films like "Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hey!" (whatever that means) but nothing succeeded like having sex with Joseph Schenck, a Fox executive who then got his friend, head of Columbia Pictures to sign her, but that only led to more screen-tests and more auditions that went nowhere. One assumes that if she did succeed in films, it meant she could STOP having casting directors, so really I can see how nobody was therefore eager to cast her. Finally she tried nude modeling, artistic ones at first, and this got her to become the mistress of someone more important, Johnny Hyde, the VP of talent agency William Morris. Hyde got her a small role in "All About Eve", and then John Huston's film "The Asphalt Jungle".
Shortly after that, Hyde died of a heart attack, but things were already in motion - Marilyn was getting thousands of fan letters a week, and thousands of men were trying to figure out how to become casting directors. And Marilyn started sleeping with more influential men, like Elia Kazan, Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford. Eventually she began the romance with Joe Dimaggio, but scandal erupted when her nude calendar photos from three years before re-surfaced, and thousands of men were so shocked and disappointed that their favorite actress had posed nude, but they also were determined to research the photos for themselves and then probably decide to forgive her.
It's the same old story, again and again, isn't it? Fall in love, get married, spend time together, spend time apart, work on a movie, spend more time apart, realize that you've both changed and want different things now, separate because it's easier than compromising or working things out, and start the whole damn cycle over again. Taylor, Hepburn, Monroe, the names and other details change but really, it's the same story, it's everyone's story, to some degree. Except that everyone doesn't then go on to have affairs with both the President of the U.S. and also his brother who happens to be his Attorney General as well.
The documentary also has to take a departure to show us the filming of "The Seven Year Itch", even though it's got nothing to do with Marilyn's death or any of the taped interviews. Except that we learn here that Joe Dimaggio was on set during the infamous shot of Marilyn's white dress being blown upwards by the air from a subway grate, and, well, Joe wasn't happy that all of the movie fans got a peep at his wife. He didn't have to be jealous, except that it was the 1950's so yeah, he kind of did. He also didn't like the fact that she would go on U.S.O. tours, and thousands of horny sex-deprived soldiers were having fantasies about Marilyn as well. Dude, you've got a smoking hot wife who gets paid well for being in movies, take the damn win! But no, their marriage was over after just nine months, so she started the eternal cycle over again.
Of course there's also footage here from "The Prince and the Showgirl" and "Some Like It Hot", but of course neither of those have anything to do with the mystery surrounding her death either, they're here because everyone knows those films, and everyone likes "Some Like It Hot", it's a great movie. However, we were promised a solution to the mystery, and the film does not chart a direct course there, it's all over the place and keeps acting more like a career retrospective than a murder mystery. Let's keep in mind that the Los Angeles County D.A. John Van de Kamp re-opened the investigation into Marilyn's death in 1982, and officially, no evidence of any foul play was ever found - so on that level, this doc is kind of misleading and a waste of time.
Directed by Emma Cooper
Also starring Anthony Summers, Ray Bull, James Croft, David Erdos, Linzi Hateley, CJ Johnson, Sorel Johnson, Andre Lillis, Sion Lloyd, Michael Matus, Shelagh McLeod, Mauro Montuschi, Jason Mulhearn, Jason Rudenskaya, Victoria Scowcroft, Heather Sherry, Daniel Stockton, Wayne Swan, Brian James Twiddy, Ben Watson, Edmond Wells,
with archive footage of Fred Astaire (also carrying over from "Audrey"), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "Film Geek"), Tony Curtis (ditto), Cary Grant (ditto), Gladys Baker, Joey Bishop (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Dean Martin (ditto), Fidel Castro (last seen in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story"), George Cukor, Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Jack Lemmon (ditto), Marlene Dietrich (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (ditto), Ginger Rogers (ditto), Joe Dimaggio (last seen in "Yogi Berrra: It Ain't Over"), Tom Ewell (last seen in "My Mom Jayne"), Clark Gable (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Greta Garbo, Ralph Greenson, Jean Harlow (last seen in "Diana Ross: Supreme Sensation"), Jimmy Hoffa, Johnny Hyde, Arthur Jacobs, Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Rather"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Joseph P. Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "Join or Die"), Nikita Khrushchev (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"), Peter Lawford (last seen in "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes"), Edward R. Murrow (ditto), Arthur Miller, Thelma Ritter (last seen in "Daddy Long Legs"), Jane Russell, Joseph M. Schenck, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Billy Wilder (also carrying over from "Audrey")
and the voices of John Danoff, Jim Doyle, Peggy Feury, Milton Greene, Danny Greenson, Hildi Greenson, Joan Greenson, Sydney Guilaroff, Harry Hall, Gary Hubbard, Ken Hunter, John Huston, Natalie Jacobs, Arthur James, Eunice Murray, Patricia Newcomb, Angie Novello, Fred Otash, Gloria Romanoff, Al Rosen, Henry Rosenfeld, Walt Schaefer, John Sherlock, Robin Thorne, Natalie Trundy, Reed Wilson, Gladys Witten, Billy Woodfield,
RATING: 4 out of 10 foster homes and orphanages during her childhood
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