Book Review: "The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe" by Sarah Churchwell

Over the time I have been into reading, I have probably read around five books on Marilyn Monroe and that is not because I was never really interested in her but instead I felt like everyone had made up their mind in terms of opinions. Everyone seemed to have something to say on Marilyn Monroe that the subject matter got almost tiring - especially opinions and conspiracies surrounding her death with the newest addition to the bookshelf ‘Bombshell’ being released only this year. Now, as she has been written about so much, it is actually difficult to sift through all the bullshit and find something that is actually worth the near-400 page print that the book promises, complete with analysis, evidence and pictures. Many people think that they don’t want a critical look at Marilyn Monroe, but I think that amongst all of the conspiracy books and the people who assume various things, it may be time to have that critical analysis text that treats Marilyn as if she were a book to be read closely, or a puzzle to be cracked. Above all, I personally think that Marilyn did a great job of fooling the world as the woman Marilyn was probably very much an entirely different person to the woman Norma Jean and yet nobody ever really realised it in the audience. A businesswoman who played the cards and as a matter of fact, won. Now, almost sixty years after her death, we are still puzzling over who she really was - as this book does as well.

“The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe” by Sarah Churchwell takes these many different aspects of the construction of the Marilyn Monroe image and personality and analyses them under a microscope, looking at influences, people and other factors of time and place to put her finger on why Marilyn became the person we all know her to be in that famous image. The deconstruction of the image of Marilyn in the chapter entitled “Producing the Image” was probably my favourite chapter in the whole book because it really looks into detail about how Marilyn Monroe really became the person her new name suggested. Everything from the change of her hair to the way in which her figure and appearance changed over the course of her life, especially when she was becoming more famous, was a carefully laid out plan by the woman herself as to play the game in the best way possible in order to start what became the revolution of sexual expression.

However, I do think that the book does a bad job when it comes to evidence for Marilyn’s character. The whole ‘he said, she said’ vibe did not sit well with me. I did think about it for a while as ‘well, how else could this have been said…’ and I really could have found no other way, so I will not be reducing the marks on this part even though something about it just bothered me a little.

On the whole, the book is a very well-written account of one of the most famous women in all of human history. Her image is unmistakable and her voice and character give her parts of the image that completes the whole. But, the whole ‘dumb blonde’ look, as this book states, was exactly that - it was a ‘look’. It was nowhere near who she really was off the screen, behind the scenes or even by herself. Marilyn Monroe as a person was a complex character fuelled by her ambition to not go back to the factory from whence she came. And so, through the ‘dumb blonde’ look - she played you all for fools.