[tv-alert]marilyn Monroe: Still Life, Showing July 19 on PBS Share | Options

[Tara]

A new documentary will be shown in the US on July 19. It sounds wonderful and I hope they'll show it in the UK too... (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/wish.gif)

American Masters (2006 Season) - "Marilyn Monroe: Still Life"

THE PERSISTENCE OF AN ICONIC STAR’S DAZZLING IMAGE IS KEY TO THIRTEEN/WNET NEW YORK’S AMERICAN MASTERS MARILYN MONROE: STILL LIFE, PREMIERING IN JULY ON PBS

Features Interviews With Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner And Gloria Steinem, And Photographers Arnold Newman, Eve Arnold And Elliott Erwitt

There is an oft told tale of Marilyn Monroe walking down a New York City street, incognito, turning to her companion and saying, “Do you want to see her?” With that, she threw off all vestiges of Norma Jean and miraculously transformed. There were no grand gestures, no change of clothes, no make-up. It was a simple shift, a slithering out of one skin into the other. Arguably the most photographed person ever, the “outing” of Marilyn is something she looked at with both skepticism and awe. She once said, “I carry Marilyn Monroe around with me like an albatross.” In a new film, AMERICAN MASTERS offers a unique take on one of the world’s first superstars by turning to the still photographs that captured Monroe’s beauty, her complexity and, ultimately, her own complicated relationship with the star side of herself. AMERICAN MASTERS Marilyn Monroe: Still Life premieres Wednesday, July 19 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

The film is a highlight of the 20th anniversary season of AMERICAN MASTERS, a five-time winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series and a recent recipient of its seventh Peabody Award. The 60-minute documentary is directed by Gail Levin, an Emmy Award-winning producer/director of both television and film whose most recent project was AMERICAN MASTERS James Dean: Sense Memories, which won a 2005 CINE Golden Eagle.

“The vast archive of Marilyn Monroe photographs cemented her in the public conscience like no one before or since,” said Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of AMERICAN MASTERS. “We are telling her story through the iconography of the 20th century. Her relationship with the lens was, perhaps, her greatest and most successful love affair.”

Says director Levin: “She was brilliantly conceived for the camera and perhaps equally its victim. Almost like Eve she entered the world naked and broke – a potent combination that created her indelible image.”

If she had lived, Monroe would celebrate her 80th birthday in June. This film is aimed at the persistence of her image. Through interviews with photographers such as Eve Arnold, Arnold Newman, Elliott Erwitt, George Zimbel, and Phil Stern, and especially through the photos themselves, Still Life captures moments of great triumph and great tragedy. From the 1949 nudes – when she posed because she needed the money – to the classic air grate photo from The Seven Year Itch through the final shots taken by George Barris in 1962, the photographs remain as an ageless memento of her guts, grace and sexiness.

Fearless, Monroe graced the first cover of Playboy in 1953. In Still Life, publisher Hugh Hefner recalls the now-classic centerfold. “One has to remember that the 1950s, the postwar era, was a very conservative time, socially, sexually, politically, and to pose for that picture and then to say that all she had on was the radio, to have that attitude in the 1950s, defined her persona and was a liberating force.” Hefner plans to be laid to rest in a crypt in Westwood Cemetery in Los Angeles, right next to Monroe, who died at age 36 in 1962.

Several celebrated writers have offered their opinion on the legend of Marilyn Monroe over the years, including Gloria Steinem (Marilyn, 1988), who discusses her earliest impressions in Still Life. “I was embarrassed by her because she was a joke, she was vulnerable. She was so eager for approval. She was all the things that I feared most being as a teenage girl.”

Norman Mailer wrote about Monroe in Marilyn: A Biography, (1973) and in Of Women and Their Elegance, (1981). In Still Life he recalls her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller. “When they moved to the country, five miles away, I just assumed that there’d be an invitation from Arthur to come over for dinner. And for a whole year, some of my friends were invited. We never were. And I never forgave Arthur for that. And what was my motivation? I wanted to meet her so I could steal her. Steal her from her husband. And you know a criminal will never forgive you for preventing them from committing the crime that is really in their heart and so I always had an edge against Arthur ever after.”

Still Life looks at Marilyn from the inside out. Ultimately, it was the camera that was her friend and the rules of friendship applied – they respected each other. The unremarkable girl with the amazing smile. The sex goddess. The great dame. The movie star in the snapshots taken by the enlisted men in Korea. The worldwide seductress. She was, as Some Like it Hot director Billy Wilder described her, an original. “The first day a photographer took a picture of her,” he said, “she was a genius.”

Marilyn Monroe: Still Life is directed by Gail Levin for AMERICAN MASTERS. Susan Lacy is executive producer of AMERICAN MASTERS. Barry Schulman is director of cultural and arts programs for Thirteen/WNET New York.

To take AMERICAN MASTERS beyond the television broadcast and further explore the themes, stories, and personalities of masters past and present, the companion Web site (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters), created by Thirteen/WNET New York, offers interviews, essays, photographs, outtakes and other resources.

AMERICAN MASTERS is produced for PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York. This acclaimed series, now celebrating its 20th season, has become a cultural legacy in its own right. The AMERICAN MASTERS film library is one of the most highly honored in television history with profiles of more than 130 artistic giants. In addition to seven Peabodys, an Oscar and two Grammys, AMERICAN MASTERS has won 16 Emmys, including Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004.

[Lauren Michele]

(IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/marilynbybrandon_190.gif) Tara, thank you so much! I have to jot down the date and time. I hope for you it does come to the UK. Lauren Michele. (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/throb.gif)

[Dirrty_Blonde]

i hope it comes on the PBS station here

[wombat]

thanks for the heads-up tara! i just entered in into the imdb! (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

about freakin' time she was recognized by "serious" TV scholarship, although they insist on calling her "Norma Jean" -- it's "Norma JeanE" dammit! so typical of those obnoxious facists at PBS! (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/angry.gif)

[Stacy]

The commercial advertising the show featured some really great portraits by Ben Ross. The show looks great.

[Paju]

That sounds really good! I hope they'll show it here too sometime (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/smile1.gif)

[Stacy]

Monroe was more than Marilyn


By MARK McGUIRE, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, July 16, 2006

She haunts us, more than four decades gone, through eyes that project mirth and pain and sexuality -- unbridled, dangerous, joyful, effortless sexuality.

Marilyn Monroe's legacy doesn't reside solely in her movies. She made less than three dozen, from minor roles early in her career to a few undisputed classics, such as the Billy Wilder comedies "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) and "Some Like It Hot" (1959).

"Look how she moves," an astounded Jack Lemmon tells Tony Curtis in "Some Like it Hot." "It's just like Jell-O on springs."

But Monroe's appeal has extended far beyond the screen. We still remember her, but these days Monroe mainly lives on in photographs -- still images, predominantly in black and white, that remain relevant in today's pop culture.

The latest installment of PBS's "American Masters" series, Gail Levin's "Marilyn Monroe: Still Life" (9 p.m. Wednesday, WMHT Ch. 17) examines the love affair between Monroe and the photographer's lens. Even if the documentary was presented without commentary or interviews with photographers and writers, the breathtaking array of photographs would be worth your hour.

Monroe, who died in 1962 of an overdose at age 36, would have turned 80 last month. (For perspective: She was two months younger than Queen Elizabeth and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.) Instead, Monroe is a pop icon frozen in perfection.

"She was made for a camera," Norman Mailer says in the film, reading from his 1973 biography of the star. "She was created to be a subject, a gorgeous subject."

She was a good actress, and an underutilized comic performer. But she was an absolutely stunning model who was always sweet and generous with the photographers -- predominantly men -- who took her picture. Oh, but she had her issues.

"The worst woman you would want to ever get mixed up with," said dinner companion and photographer Arnold Newman. "I mean, nothing but real problems."

As this documentary shows, Monroe could've been billed as The Woman of a Thousand Faces. We just don't know which one was really her.

In "Still Life," a series of photographers talk about working with Monroe, and the results -- some of the most famous celebrity photographs ever taken.

The first-ever Playboy centerfold. The skirt blowing up on the New York City subway grate (for "The Seven Year Itch"). Innumerable close-ups and come-hither boudoir shots, her poses a blend of confidence, allure and vulnerability. One Italian magazine ran eight pages of Monroe photographs of her posterior alone.

Monroe was about sex, and put herself in front of a society that simultaneously exalts and indicts the act. (As a warning or enticement, I offer this: The documentary features a handful of nude and semi-nude photographs of Monroe.)

As her star was rising in the early '50s, Monroe was confronted by an extortionist holding nude shots she had done in her early modeling days. "In the previous decade any hint of scandal of that sort could destroy a career," Hefner says in the film.
But instead of paying to bury the photos, Monroe freely admitted to posing for them. That was her style: Rather than run from sex, she embraced it on film and in life. Monroe, it can be argued, played a major role in paving the way for the sexual revolution that materialized in the late 1960s.
"We are all born sexual creatures," we hear Monroe say in a scratchy audio interview recorded just two days before her death. "I don't mind being glamorous and sexual. It's a special burden, but it is a burden."

For someone who was so much in the public eye -- for her films as well as her tumultuous marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller -- there is a mysteriousness that still surrounds the woman born Norma Jean. Elton John sang in "Candle in the Wind" about being someone "who sees you as something as more than sexual/More than just our Marilyn Monroe." Many couldn't, and still can't.

"Marilyn Monroe: Still Life" doesn't set out to solve the riddle of Monroe's life. Rather, it's about her photographic likeness, and the personal exchange between subject and shooter. These interactions are brief slices of her life, fleeting as the image captured on film. They do not reveal all.

Still, the best clues in the search for the real Marilyn remain the thousands of photographs. Yes, the pain she suffered -- especially in later years when drugs and alcohol took hold -- is there. If you look hard enough.

That was part of the real Marilyn, but not the one we remember. Not the one who endures. Maybe we need to look harder at these photographs.





I'm sure at a later date PBS will offer a DVD for sale at their store on their web site.

This post has been edited by chickeyonthego: Jul 17 2006, 04:06 PM

[Lauren Michele]

(IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/banana.gif) I thought I missed Still Life!

This post has been edited by Lauren Michele: Jul 19 2006, 01:42 PM

[Brigitte]

OK, I just watched it. OMG it was great! Great interviews, Great pix, and The great Marilyn audio! You have to see it! Anyone else have comments?

[Tara]

Lots more info on the show, and additional footage...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/da...e/monroe_m.html

This post has been edited by Tara: Jul 20 2006, 12:48 PM

[meganmarilyn]

The thing I didn't like were the snide comments thrown at her by some of the people who saw her or came up to face with her.

"Oh, she didn't really have that good of a nose".

"She didn't do a very good job (reading her lines at the Actors Studio)".

I was laughing alot the way they tried to get inside what she was about, it seemed she was this great big mystery they were all trying to solve. Well, duh! If you STEP BACK and don't look at the glamourus movie star Marilyn Monroe, but look into the eyes of the woman Norma Jeane, you wouldn't have NO PROBLEM understanding her. Sheez. They also didn't talk about what being photographed 24 hours a day did to her. It was all the camera from their own side of view. They tried to understand WHY she was sad, stuff like that. Hmmm...maybe if you are being followed no mattter where you turn, you have someone taking your picture, night and day. And you can't get one day off in peace. I just can't understand why people make it so difficult to understand what that's like, even if you've never been exposed the way she was. Marilyn was the main attraction at a zoo. And the media and fans were the crowds that gathered around her to stare and gasp. She wasn't a human being. All one had to do was meet her on a basic human level. Talk to her as if you are talking to an innocent child. I think people have forgotten what that is about and what innocence is.

Sad.

This post has been edited by meganmarilyn: Jul 20 2006, 01:10 PM

[Brigitte]

I thought it was really well done! You have to remember she posed for the camera because she loved it! Sure she was hounded by photographers but that's what being a movie star is all about, and she wantedto be a movie star! She loved being photographed! I think all they were saying is that ......Every picture tells a story.  George_Barris_Mexican_Sweater_1962__5_.jpg ( 72.27K )Number of downloads: 93

[capricornangel]

I too thought it was very well done and enjoyed it and the pics were amazing too (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/clapping.gif)
although I do have to agree about the fact that some comments made were a bit mean but apart from that they still showed her the respect that she deserves unlike some of those other documentaries that exist

[Stacy]

I loved the fact that they had Norman Mailer reading his own quotes from his book, "Marilyn." Sad they didn't meet, as she was having a bad day. I can understand wanting to meet her when she looked better.
Loved the photos of Ben Ross. Maybe they will do a book of his photos. They are some of my favorites. Also there were some Cecil Beaton that I'd never seen before. Hopefully they will someday be in a book.
All in all I liked the show. I'm waiting til they sell the DVD on the PBS site.

[Lauren Michele]

I really enjoyed this documetary. I didn't refresh myself and read what it was going to be about and I was really happy how they put this together. They went through alot of Marilyn's photographer's living and the one's who are deceased, either family or thier partners described how the sessions were as they showed us the picture and they walked us through how not only Marilyn's beauty, but, one photographer said something like she was beyond human or something to that affect as she ran up to him. She was almost floating on air. They described as we all know how the camera loved Marilyn. It was very tactfully done. They, the photographers, talked calmly and captured my full attention not only with pictures but how they described Marilyn when she would show up for her session. She wanted Champagne on ice and Frank Sanatra playing for her shoots. Not all I suspect. I just loved it. .....Lauren Michele

[meganmarilyn]

It's easy for us to say she loved being a movie star or being photographed. We have no idea of the pressure she was always under. She sure wasn't happy being a movie star at the end of her life. Whenever she talked of Marilyn, she always referred to herself in the 3rd person. She was trying to disconnect from that identity.

I thought it was really well done! You have to remember she posed for the camera because she loved it! Sure she was hounded by photographers but that's what being a movie star is all about, and she wantedto be a movie star! She loved being photographed! I think all they were saying is that ......Every picture tells a story.  George_Barris_Mexican_Sweater_1962__5_.jpg ( 72.27K )Number of downloads: 93

[Tara]

I think Marilyn's feelings about being photographed were quite complex. In one sense, I think she had a great talent as a model, and was happiest when she was working with people who respected her. It was one area of her life where she felt confident and in control. But on another level, I think it disturbed her that sometimes she was reduced to a mere product. She once said that she didn't always enjoy photographed but she could never show it, or it would ruin her career.

I think she most enjoyed working with people like Milton Greene, Richard Avedon and Eve Arnold who allowed her some creative input. But she might not have felt the same way about the paparazzi who hounded her. Also these photographers who claim to have had affairs with her, I wonder how she might really have felt about them and what they said about her.

I would like to see this documentary, it sounds very interesting and well-done. But I do understand Megan's point that we will never really get to see Marilyn's own perspective, not completely. Because she isn't here to tell her side of the story, it will always be told from the photographer's point of view.

This post has been edited by Tara: Jul 24 2006, 11:31 AM

[Lauren Michele]

Tara, I wish I would have taped this documentary. I can't believe I didn't. I probably could have told you and everyone about it with details. You give us so much of your time and information about Marilyn and I wish that I can do that for you this time. There is always the future i suppose. One session stands out in my mind I hope I am not confused with names. I believe Marilyn was to be photographed by Cecil Beaton. Well, she showed up at Mr. Beaton's door, I believe his room, and I'm sure someone spoke for Cecil for he is deceased I am sure and from what Cecil said, Marilyn was very relaxed, she looked beautiful of course. He asked Marilyn where she would to be photographed and if I'm not mistaking, she looked around and said enthusiastically "right here"! So she was photographed in his room. I went to Cecil Beaton's photo sessions that ES has and it does remind me of his room. Also, I noticed in some pictures, I noticed she looked very tired and he captured that on film. She looked like herself I am trying to say. Especially when she is sitting on a wicker chair. Her face looks long and exhausted. So, I am not sure if she was just tired or she didn't enjoy working with him. But from what I saw, Marilyn was in control alot with how she wanted to pose, she new how to sit a certain way almost as if she were flirting with the camera. (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/marilynbybrandon_190.gif) ....Lauren Michele

[Tara]

Thanks for sharing that story Lauren. And I'm sure that I will see that show before long. (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Lauren Michele]

Thanks for sharing that story Lauren. And I'm sure that I will see that show before long. (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) You're very welcome. I just hope I got the story straight. (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)