‘Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe’By Gail CrowtherGallery Books, 304 pagesIn 1984, as I was completing my biography of Marilyn Monroe, I gave a talk at an academic conference, discussing my interviews with actresses Ellen Burstyn and Susan Strasberg, and with Audrey Flack about her magnificent paintings of Monroe, I was approached by a prominent feminist scholar who shocked me by saying she hoped the next time I would write a book about a strong woman. I received similar responses from other female colleagues who were embarrassed by Monroe.Missing from Gail Crowther’s brilliant book is an awareness of just how ashamed certain women were of the actress. She cites instead recent books by women who now respect Monroe. It was a struggle for me to get publishers to acknowledge I was dealing with a serious subject, so I am heartened to see this belated recognition. Ms. Crowther discusses Monroe’s reading of Mabel Elsworth Todd’s “The Thinking Body,” which shows how Monroe worked on her body as an instrument—what Burstyn told me when we discussed Monroe’s work on “Niagara.” Ms. Crowther probes Monroe’s literary sensibility and interest in art, which her masseur, fellow actor, and friend, Ralph Roberts, demonstrated by showing me a book about art that she had discussed and gifted to him.Carl Sandburg, Saul Bellow, and Clifford Odets were impressed with Monroe’s wide ranging intellectual interests, although Ms. Crowther is careful not to call her an intellectual. The many photographs of her reading make it unlikely they were made simply to impress. Just as telling, Ms. Crowther observes, is that Monroe took her books with her to dozens of different residences. Books were, in short, constituents of her psyche.Ms. Crowther asks pertinent questions about Arthur Miller’s parsimonious treatment of Monroe’s reading. Why does he say so little about it, commenting that she rarely finished a book? It is not really speculating to say she discussed books with her husband, including his own, and that she shrewdly analyzed and faulted his screenplay of “The Misfits,” with a role specifically designed for her.Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller at their wedding. Via Wikimedia CommonsMs. Crowther boldly attempts to explain why Monroe was filled with so much self-doubt. The usual explanations deal with a traumatic childhood, her time in an orphanage, and other early shocks to her system, but what may be as important is the biographer’s identification of the actress’s “imposter syndrome,” the fear of being a fraud in spite of great success.Early on, Monroe confronted many examples of men in authority, especially in Hollywood, who doubted her talent and did not relent in their negative assessments even as she became a movie star. There were exceptions, Ms. Crowther notes, like the director Henry Hathaway whom she credits with great faith in Monroe’s genius. But in the main she did not escape ridicule of a kind not applied to contemporaries like Marlon Brando and James Dean, also depicted as readers.If you are constantly told you are unworthy, that you are dependent on the good will of others—directors, producers, the press (you name it), it is difficult to surmount not just the doubts but the male sniggering on social media today which, Ms. Crowther comments, mock the photographs of Monroe reading and treat her as simply a sexual object.Marilyn Monroe in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (1953). Via Wikimedia CommonsAs Ms. Crowther observes, much progress has been made in recognizing how smart, even brilliant Monroe was as a performer, and yet there this lingering skepticism, a range of dismissals of her that she found hard to ignore. In a final interview with journalist Richard Meryman, Monroe pleaded with him not to make her a joke. I heard her say that on the recording Meryman played for me. What I also heard is not that whispery voice, which Crowther says belongs to the character Monroe created, but a strong vibrant voice and a robust laugh. Asked the right questions, which Meryman is good at, she is perfectly confident. Why, Ms. Crowther asks, in so many interviews of Monroe did no one actually ask her what she was reading? You can’t do better than Ms. Crowther’s book to find out.Mr Rollyson is the author of Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Marilyn Monroe Day by Day, and Female Icons: Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag.
