Product Description

This biography is based upon newly released primary sources, including private letters from key players in Marilyn Monroe's life. The author travelled around America to do her research and talked to Arthur Miller, Anna Freud, Yves Montant and Monroe's psychiatrist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149876 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
This extraordinarily thoughtful book by Barbara Leaming, a literary star among film-star biographers, offers the last thing you'd expect in a book on Marilyn Monroe: new information from verifiable sources. Certainly, much of the tragedy is familiar: an abused, confused girl from an orphanage with a mother in a madhouse rises from sexual party favour for homely showbiz men to the movie superstar who pushes them around, until she crashes, a victim of self-loathing and drug addiction.

The thing about a tragedy is that its heroine isn't a victim--she's responsible for her fate. Leaming does scholarly spadework, digging up hard facts from sources like UCLA's 20th Century Fox collection and the diary-like first drafts of Arthur Miller's semi- autobiographical work, and she makes sense of Monroe's motives. She even apparently solves Monroe's suicide with clues from the star's psychiatrist's letters in the Anna Freud collection. Her last overdose may have happened just because her psychiatrist went to dinner with his wife and she felt abandoned.

But until pills killed her, Monroe wasn't a candle in the wind. She burned with ambition and knew how to craft a persona and play power games--with moguls and with the McCarthyites hounding her husband Miller. Leaming plausibly analyses the Miller- Monroe-Elia Kazan love/hate triangle, sizes up the Kennedy connection, condemns her acting coach Lee Strasberg as "chillingly mercenary," and deftly shows just how her life entangled her art, film by film. This book is a work of sharp intellect and emotional insight unclouded by lust or star worship. --Tim Appelo

About the Author
Barbara Leaming is one of America's premier biographers. With the help of Orson Welles she was the first to write a serious biography of this noted director and actor. Her other subjects include Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy. She is married and lives in Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

A book as detailed and fascinating as the woman herself.
The author has obviously done a great deal of research into her subject and it shows. She details Marilyn Monroe's childhood, family, relationships, friendships, marriages, career and problems with such detail you almost feel you knew her.
Read this if you are a Marilyn enthusiast or have only just become interested in learning about this remarkable woman. You may also find it a fascinating book if you are interested in films and particularly those of the 1950s.
This book provides a very satisfying read and other Marilyn biographies pale in comparison. However, although this book does not take the official cause of death at face value, mentioning the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death, it says nothing of the murder theories.
If you are interested in learning all the theories and judging the truth for yourself I suggest reading this book to learn the official version of matters and then another such as 'The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe' or 'Last Take' which give much more detail about her relationships with the Kennedys and the various alternative theories.
This book gives Marilyn Monroe the biography she deserves, exploding the myths about her supposed limited intelligence and really making her come alive.
Readers cannot help but be touched on some personal level by this book and the remarkable lady behind the name.

A beautiful book
This is my personal favourite book about Marilyn Monroe. Partly because it is based so much on real documentation from 20th Century Fox, and partly because of Barbara Leaming's storytelling powers. It is genius, really, to open the book with a scene when Marilyn, in her early twenties, meets Arthur Miller for the first time. Here we see her in a distressed state, with all her ambitions for fame, success and love unfulfilled and everything before her. The paradox of her life is that she got all of it, and then died so young.

Leaming has used the vast Twentieth Century Fox Collection at UCLA as her primary source for the book. As she says in her notes on sources, 'the drama of Marilyn's perpetual conflicts with Darryl Zanuck and other studio executives explodes in these utterly fascinating pages'.

You can't help but feel for Marilyn, a troubled and vulnerable woman who nevertheless pushed hard to get her own way and explored psychotherapy and pursued acting seriously in an effort to improve her life and understand herself. I think Barbara Leaming really captures her in a fresh and compelling way.

A Very Detached Review of our Heroine
Being an avid fan of the beloved Marilyn for many years now I have read all the books under the sun about her life, loves, career,etc. Although obviously extensively researched, this book seems to do nothing more than portray Marilyn as a hard-headed business woman who thought of no one but herself.
Unfortunately,this does not match the many biographies I have read over the years! I was left disappointed by the way her death was skimmed over. Having read Donald Wolfe's 'The Assasination of Marilyn Monroe' I expected full, factual evidence of why the author believes in the 'suicide theory'. Sadly none forthecoming! Interesting book but not for Mazzie lovers, it will make you angry!