One of my favorite quarantine reads was Elizabeth Winder’s Marilyn In Manhattan: Her Year of Joy. My reasons for reading it were twofold. First, I’m doing research for my novel, which partially focuses on a silver screen siren circa 1956. Secondly, because I consider Marilyn Monroe to be of the most enigmatic, fascinating women to ever roam this earth, and I have ever since finding Donald Spoto’s biography of her in the stacks of the school library when I was fourteen, fresh off of reading Antonia Frasier’s biography of Marie Antoinette (they were shelved alphabetically by the first name of the subject). I had never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie but I was instantly transfixed. Here was this woman, whom our culture commodified, vulnerable, staring out at me from the biography jacket. Harboring dreams of acting and singing myself (I was going to move to California to pursue those dreams as soon as I turned 18!) I picked up the biography and devoured it. Thus began my obsession with all things Marilyn.
I collect biographies about her, and the occasional knickknack like a fleece blanket, candle, a notebook, and an eye mask (though the mask has gone missing between moves). The collection grows and grows, but Elizabeth Winder’s contribution came after a transformative back to back watch of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the first movie I’ve ever seen starring Marilyn Monroe. Watching her light up the screen as scheming showgirl Lorelei, I saw comedy take the shape of a blonde bombshell who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted out of life. But I knew as soon as the cameras stopped rolling there was a deep sadness within her soul. Who was she when she was alone?
A wife?
A motherless child?
A childless mother?
An actress devoted to her craft?
A sex pot who fucked her way up to the top?
She was, to some degree, all of those things and more.
A reader. (“On set she was known as ditsy and distant, always darting away with a book between takes” [2]).
A writer. (“In New York Marilyn became a compulsive writer, a habit she retained for the duration of her life. She loved classic composition books and always had several ongoing at once, their black-and-white marbled covers scattered throughout [the] house…She also bought a tiny leather diary, one with a clasp and a key. She would carry it around the house, making notes on conversations or magazine articles that caught her interest” [40–41]).
A friend. (According to Winder she “formed friendships with writers and intellectuals such as Carson McCullers and Truman Capote” [xvi]. Capote is mention multiple times in Her Year of Joy).
My novel, in part, imagines the starlet figure as a lesbian dying to break free, while Winder’s biography of a year in the real Marilyn Monroe’s life captures the star as a “powerless” woman trying to push her way out of the mold and take control of her career.
When Carson McCullers and Truman Capote were mentioned, my inner ears perked up. There’s been many a salacious rumor about Monroe’s sexuality and the rumors don’t all involve JFK. I can take the rumors or leave them, depending on the day. Marilyn isn’t here isn’t here to set the record straight. Winder, for her part, did not delve into the rumors in any capacity.
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson, on the first of June 1926. We now celebrate Pride in the month of June. Thanks to COVID-19, Pride events are being cancelled left and right, or moving to virtual platforms. I’ll be celebrating from home, lighting some candles for Marilyn Monroe and all of the people who maybe lead a queer inner life, even if on the outside they have to become someone else to win the approval of their outer world. I hope one day we can all be who we are and that more light can be shed on those in the past who may or may not have been hiding.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter if Marilyn was queer (though she has been celebrated as a queer icon at the Stonewall National Museum, so there’s that). It matters that to me that I interpret her as queer. Marilyn is a blank canvas, and that’s just the way we want her. From comedy queen to sexpot, she did it all…or all we let her do. She was lonely, and bookish, and sad, but she always had a trick up her sleeve. So I think it’s fitting that when we wave our rainbow flags, and paint our faces, and celebrate the beginning of Pride, that we may celebrate Marilyn too, for all that she maybe could not say.
This piece originally appeared on my blog, flappersandphilosophersohmy.wordpress.com. You can follow my book instagram @ flapperandphilosophersohmy or my writing instagram @ flappersandphilosophersoracle .
