Kat: At some point, hopefully, I'll be doing a book review of Jeanine Basinger's THE MOVIE MUSICAL! book. The nearly 600 page book (599 pages) has been a slog to get through -- not due to the length but due to the author's meandering prose and, worse, her inability to move chronologically. I'll save all of that for a book review. But I picked up the book because my all time crush, Gene Kelly, was on the book cover.
Marilyn Monroe. She's an actress the whole world still knows even though her last film was released in 1961, one year before her death. Since her death, not only has she been a major part in books like Basinger's movie musical book, she's also been the sole subject of hundreds of biographies. In terms of film? TV and theater movies about Marilyn Monroe? At least 16. That's not counting the various one hour documentaries that have been done by BIOGRAPHY and LIFETIME and assorted other outlets. Right now, on Broadway, Tony winner Robyn Hurder is starring in SMASH as an actress playing Marilyn in a musical (this based on the TV series SMASH).
Marilyn's never really left us. And she is amazing to this day.
SOME LIKE IT HOT might just be the best American comedy film ever made. She's amazing in that (and won a Golden Globe for her performance). I also love her teamed up with Jane Russell in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. While I enjoy all of her films -- and ALL ABOUT EVE wouldn't have been ALL ABOUT EVE without her as Miss Casswell (her character is the explanation and glorification for why Margo Channing exists -- Miss Casswell is fluff and beauty, Margo rose to the top on talent) -- it's those two that I really seem to watch over and over.
Those films are both musicals and she starred in several. Jeanine Basinger makes Marilyn the end point in what she dubs "FOX Blondes." She feels that, with variations, the same character/prototype starts at FOX studio with Shirley Temple and then moves through Alice Faye and Betty Grable before concluding with Monroe.
It may not be Shirley's fault that her own star grows weaker each year. It probably has more to do with the fact that glorifications of the Confederacy (THE LITTLE COLONEL which is post Civil War and THE LITTLEST REBEL which is during the Civil War and Shirley and her family are slave owners -- and I'm ignoring her films as an adult actress because they weren't Shirley Temple vehicles and because they came after she stopped being a box office success) and possibly due to some of the creepy feelings created from the early fetish films she did -- the BABY BURLESKS -- don't really hold up as 'good clean fun' that her later child fame rested upon.
Marilyn Monroe is the only FOX Blonde that stands out to this day and remains a star.
I think of her first and foremost as a comedian. She delivers great comic performances in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, LET'S MAKE LOVE, MONKEY BUSINESS, THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL and, of course, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and SOME LIKE IT HOT. But if you're noting her in a book on movie musicals, it's also true that she was a star in that genre.
And as I'm trudging through Basinger's book, I'm appalled by some of the actresses and actors she's gushing over. In terms of women? Golden age Hollywood musicals had very few female stars. There is Monroe, there is Betty Grable, there, of course, is Judy Garland, there's Lena Horne, there's Doris Day, there's Dorothy Dandridge. That really is about it. So when you start downgrading -- as Basinger does -- Marilyn while elevating people like Kathryn Grayson -- who was never box office and who few people even know of today -- or June Haver or actresses with even less famous names today, I get a little ticked off.
THE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, MISS MARILYN MONROE came out in April of 2020. It's 33 songs.
I love it. Monroe could sing. I had to research to be able to type the previous sentence. Supposedly Marnie Nixon helped on "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" -- with the high "No!" Maybe so. Maybe no. Marnie did love to claim credit for everything but talk to actually film historians and you'll find that not all of her vocals were used in the musicals she recorded them for -- not even when she was brought in just to sweeten a note for an actress. Other than that one song, there are no claims that Marilyn's vocals were not her own.
And any claims that emerge after this review goes up?
I won't believe them. Mainly because of the video below.
That's Marilyn Monroe entertaining US troops in Korea in 1954. That performance? She did four days of performances in South Korea for US troops. They weren't planned. She and Joe DiMaggio were in Japan on their honeymoon. It was last minute and there she is on stage singing live and more than demonstrating she can sing -- and do so in primitive conditions -- this was not where you recorded a live album. The sound's bouncing all over the open space and she still delivers.
Ella Fitzgerald was one of Marilyn's favorite singers as was Frank Sinatra and I hear influences of both in her singing. But she was also an original all of her own.
That's clear in the 33 songs -- all of which come from her film work. "Let's Make Love" is on the album and that may cause some regret. Not because the collection omits the version she does with Yves Montand in the film but because it includes the one she did with Frankie Vaughan for the film. Frankie disappear in the film and this song will remind you how sad that is. The same reaction you'll have when "Specialization" pops up -- the one pairing her with Frankie (not the one in the film where she sings it with Yves). Sadly, it's the version of "Incurably Romantic" with Yves that makes the collection. All of this will just remind you of how Yves Montand is more irritating than normal in LET'S MAKE LOVE. And and just listening to the natural manner in which Marilyn and Frankie sing will make you regret what LET'S MAKE LOVE could have been.
Marilyn does a strong cover of "When I Fall In Love" using some of the range and breath control that she did for "Runnin Wild" (also on this collection) in SOME LIKE IT HOT.
Speaking of that film, "I'm Through With Love."
She sings that number in SOME LIKE IT HOT after she's found her millionaire only to have him announce that he's got to enter an arranged marriage. She's destroyed. And she conveys it in the scene but even without the visual, listen to the track above, she delivers.
She's wonderful on "Heat Wave." And it's wonderful to experience the song in this collection because I hate THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS. From time to time, I want to see that scene -- a rather famous one and the only real reason the musical's remembered today. I'll put it on (I have the DVD collection of all of Marilyn's movies) and usually get impatient and fast forward to that scene and then stop. Donald O'Connor and The Merm are not appealing and leave me torn between using my hands to shield my eyes or to cover my ears. That may be why I missed "After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It."
"You'd Be Surprised," "When Love Goes Wrong" (with Jane Russell), "Do It Again," "Lazy" and many more are just a thrill to hear. When she died, despite the lie in the press for years, her film career was not over (she had been rehired to finish SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE and had other roles lined up). But if it had been? Like Judy Garland did, Marilyn could have easily turned to live performances.
There's something about her that causes us to embrace her. As THE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, MISS MARILYN MONROE makes clear, it wasn't just her looks.
