The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (ISBN 0805078185)

Finally, a look at the real woman!:
This is one of the best books on Marilyn Monroe I have ever read, if not THE best. The author does a fantastic job of analyzing the various biographies of MM and strips away the myths, lies, improbabilities, and biased ways others saw her that have distorted her image and life for the past 40 years. Churchwell shows us that NO, Marilyn was not crazy, nor was she split into two people - Marilyn Monroe and Norma Jeane - anymore than Cary Grant was split into CG and Archie Leach (his real name). She shows us that MM was a complicated and intelligent woman and a successful actress who tried to improve her acting and her mind throughout her life. I deeply respect the author of this book for her objectivity, honesty, penetrating analysis, and scholarship, and for showing how so much of what has been written about Marilyn is either stereotypical, unfounded, nonsensical, or just plain untrue. I loved it!

Good Book:
This was a very informative book with plenty of references to biographies on Marylin Monroe in the past.

The Many Lives of Monroe prove biographers are NOT a Movie Icon's Best Friends!:
Marilyn Monroe was born in Los Angeles in 1926. Her mother had mental health problems; her father was not in the picture for long. MM spent time in foster homes and orphanages. She became Playboy's first centerfold; she became the world's most famous blonde bombshell in post World War II America; she died at the early age of 36 on the night of August 4, 1962. Her most memorable movie roles were "Niagara:" The Seven Year Itch"; "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," "How to Marry a Millionare": "Some Like It Hot" and her final film "The Misfits" . Other than these basic facts most of Monroe's life is the subject of conjecture, prurient interests and mysteries galore! Dr. Sarah Churchwell is an American scholar teaching in England. This book is not a traditional biography of Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson). It is, rather, a scholarly examination of her most famous biographers and the various theories they posit as to the life lived by the sexy star. Many of these biographies, opines Churchwell, are based more on speculation than facts. Churchwell examines the biographies by such famed authors as Norman Mailer; Barbara Leaming; Donald H. Spoto; Donald H. Wolfe and others. Churchwell also looks closely at Joyce Carole Oates fictional account of Marilyn's life entitled "Blonde". Churchwell explores the various theories on the marriages of Miss Monroe to James Daughtery; Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. When playwright Miller wed Marilyn it was called a coupling of Egghead and Hourglass. Dimaggio probably beat her up. We see Marilyn Monroe through the lenses and the biases of her various biographers. We still do not know for sure: a. Whether she ever had an abortion or had at least 14 of them. b. Was a dimwit or had a sharp intelligence. c. Did she die of a drug overdose or commit suicide? Was she murdered by suspects ranging from the CIA to the Kennedy Family to the Mafia. Or was she murdered by her doctor and housekeeper or a Soviet Agent? We will in all likelihood never know for sure. Conspiracy theories abound. This is a good book to sort out what is fact and what fanciful or speculative in the life of Marilyn Monroe. It is a good book showing fine research and adds insight to our understanding of the enigmatic star.

Norma Jeane WAS Marilyn Monroe:
A book about other books may not sound like a desirable, let alone obvious, choice for someone looking for a biography of Marilyn Monroe. And yet, surprisingly (or not), this may be one of the very best - certainly one of the most comprehensive - books on MM so far. »Marilyn Monroe«, the icon (as the obnoxious byword goes), is largely a construct. I think we all know that, more or less. But just to what extent she - and not just her public persona, but also her own views of herself - was a construct, and what drove her, that is the question. In this book, Sarah Churchwell dissects the traditional - very deceptive and largely false - dichotomy between »Norma Jeane« (the quasi-orphan, the martyr) and »Marilyn Monroe« (the glamour »icon« and, ultimately, the martyr again), and proves it to be fallacious. She analyses the views (and ulterior constructs) of each major biographer of the »icon« - and in doing that, by identifying and thus removing, as it were, the lens that each biographer used, she inevitably presents us with flashes of the »real« Norma Jeane/Marilyn. An icon is, by definition, an IMAGE. And Norma Jeane/MM, as I understand her, really saw herself largely AS an image - through the eyes of others. (One may argue that, in the absence of a healthy childhood and early adolescence, she never outgrew the self-imaging through the eyes of the others that is typical of prepubescents and a natural stage of early development. Ironically - only not really - it was precisely this dysfunctional, »iconic« view of herself what attracted the gaze of others and brought her fame. N.B. At this point, I could include some very a propos ramblings about her function as an embodiment of the Jungian anima... but I know better. ;) Which is why Norma Jeane/Marilyn knew how to exploit the emerging public image of her. She knew what the public wanted or needed to hear, in order to reinforce her image. (Personally, I think she did this on a more intuitive, almost instinctive level than as a result of some premeditated »strategy«.) And which is why, for example, the horror stories about her childhood, including the alleged rapes, may not have been entirely true to fact. Nor is there any evidence of the 14 (fourteen) abortions that not only Norman Mailer attributed to her (and later admitted it was his own invention), but she is claimed to have had spread the rumour herself. For those who already have a definite opinion on MM, either positive or negative, this - as you can imagine - is probably not the most desirable of books. It does nothing to reinforce any of the stereotypical images of her. For those who are looking for insight into the »real« Norma Jeane/Marilyn (and yes, it WAS essentially the same person, as Churchwell successfully proves), it's probably the best - certainly the safest - bet. Sarah Churchwell is not infatuated with the subject of her book, nor has she an ax to grind. This makes her probably the perfect biographer, certainly in the eyes of a reader who is himself/herself reasonably impartial towards the subject. And for a scholarly book, she uses a refreshingly direct and effective language, which is not the least of her merits as a writer. (I do have a few quibbles regarding certain assertions or rhetorical questions - one such example is to be found on p. 263 - but that is because I happen to have a strong dislike for generalisation in matters where, in reality, there are no "self-evident" answers, as the questions imply. Such faults, however tiny, could have a potentially debilitating effect on the overall strength of the argument.) In short, this is a »he said, she said« book - which, by that very virtue, succeeds in presenting credible glimpses of a humanly complex being embedded in the »icon«. I, for one, have certainly learned more about MM from this book than from all the others combined (with the possible exception of Michelle Morgan's Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, which is an entirely different kind of work).

A boring book on marilyn:
Sorry, but I found this book written by an author who used other books written about Marilyn by other authors and "her opinions" on those. If you are confused by that statement, try reading this boring rehashed book of other books on poor Marilyn. Don't bother and waste your money. No lie.......ugh!