The brief, brilliant career of Marilyn Monroe has haunted Hollywood for more than 50 years, her life and work and untimely death the subject of endless litigation and debate. A new Netflix documentary, “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes,” dives back into the lurid lore surrounding Monroe, tapping into all too familiar themes of trauma and addiction before landing right back where it began.
Directed by Emma Cooper, “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes” focuses not directly on Monroe herself but on writer and journalist, Anthony Summers, author of the book “Goddess” (about who else but Monroe). “Goddess,” published in 1985, is a requisite biography, full of conversations with Monroe affiliates and allies. Cooper’s documentary, in turn, pulls from the audio used for that book, hours of Summers in conversation with people who knew Marilyn (or who knew people who knew Marilyn). What follows is more like a podcast,...
Directed by Emma Cooper, “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes” focuses not directly on Monroe herself but on writer and journalist, Anthony Summers, author of the book “Goddess” (about who else but Monroe). “Goddess,” published in 1985, is a requisite biography, full of conversations with Monroe affiliates and allies. Cooper’s documentary, in turn, pulls from the audio used for that book, hours of Summers in conversation with people who knew Marilyn (or who knew people who knew Marilyn). What follows is more like a podcast,...
- 4/25/2022
- by Fran Hoepfner
- The Wrap
“The true things rarely get into circulation,” Marilyn Monroe once said. Indeed, her complicated life and premature death spawned many conspiracies. This film separates fact from fiction, helped by never-before-heard interviews from the archives of Monroe biographer Anthony Summers. Here’s what shocked us. —Ileane Rudolph 1. Monroe’s then-husband, baseball great Joe Dimaggio, was so incensed after she filmed the billowing-dress scene from The Seven Year Itch, “he beat her up,” according to hairdresser Gladys Witten. 2. The troubled beauty, who’d lived in foster homes as a child, was a patient of psychiatrist Ralph Greenson. Part of his unorthodox treatment: including the movie star in his own family gatherings! 3. According to insiders, after the icon died by overdose in 1962 at her L.A. home, hired fixers for President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with whom Monroe allegedly had affairs, removed from the premises items that had to do with the men.
- 4/24/2022
- TV Insider
In a six-page letter to the psychiatrist who would find her dead a year later, a forlorn Marilyn Monroe wrote about her harrowing experience inside a New York psychiatric clinic, a stay which she said "had a very bad effect." The March 1, 1961, letter to Dr. Ralph Greenson detailed her excruciating experience within Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a New York City sanitarium her other psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris, committed her to the previous month. A carbon copy of the letter (not the original) is one of many of Monroe's personal items to be auctioned off this November by Julien's Auctions, which received...
- 5/10/2016
- by Liz McNeil and Kathy Ehrich Dowd
- PEOPLE.com
In a six-page letter to the psychiatrist who would find her dead a year later, a forlorn Marilyn Monroe wrote about her harrowing experience inside a New York psychiatric clinic, a stay which she said "had a very bad effect." The March 1, 1961, letter to Dr. Ralph Greenson detailed her excruciating experience within Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a New York City sanitarium her other psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris, committed her to the previous month. A carbon copy of the letter (not the original) is one of many of Monroe's personal items to be auctioned off this November by Julien's Auctions, which received...
- 5/10/2016
- by Liz McNeil and Kathy Ehrich Dowd
- PEOPLE.com
Looks like her natural beauty had a little help. Medical records and X-rays of Marilyn Monroe set to be sold at auction next month appear to show that screen icon had facial plastic surgery during her 1950s Hollywood career. The memorabilia, to go on the block Nov. 9-10 by Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, is expected to fetch anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 and comes from her plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Gurdin, reports New York's Daily News. Gurdin gave the films and notes to a friend who has put them up for bid anonymously. They show that in 1950 Monroe, who saw doctors...
- 10/9/2013
- by Andrea Billups
- PEOPLE.com
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