Marilyn Monroe
By PAUL RUDNICK
Updated: 2006-08-11 14:22
 How much
deconstruction can one blond bear? Just about everyone has had a go at Marilyn
Monroe. There have been more than 300 biographies, learned essays by Steinem and
Kael, countless documentaries, drag queens, tattoos, Warhol silk screens and
porcelain collector's dolls.
Marilyn has gone from actress to icon to licensed brand name; only Elvis and
James Dean have rivaled her in market share. At this point, she seems almost
beyond comment, like Coca-Cola or Levi's. How did a woman who died a suicide at
36, after starring in only a handful of movies, become such an epic commodity?
Much has been made of Marilyn's desperate personal history, the litany of
abusive foster homes and the predatory Hollywood scum that accompanied her
wriggle to stardom. Her heavily flashbulbed marriages included bouts with
baseball great Joe DiMaggio and literary champ Arthur Miller, and her off-duty
trysts involved Sinatra and the rumor of multiple Kennedys.
The unauthorized tell-alls burst with miscarriages, abortions, rest cures and
frenzied press conferences announcing her desire to be left alone. Her death has
been variously attributed to an accidental overdose, political necessity and a
Mob hit. Her yummily lurid bio has provided fodder for everything from a failed
Broadway musical to Jackie Susann's trash classics to a fictionalized portrait
in Miller's play After the Fall. Marilyn's media-drenched image as a tragic dumb
blond has become an American archetype, along with the Marlboro Man and the
Harley-straddling wild one. Yet biographical trauma, even when packed with
celebrities, cannot account for Marilyn's enduring stature as a goddess and
postage stamp.
Jacqueline Onassis will be remembered for her timeline, for her participation
in events and marriages that mesmerized the planet. Marilyn seems far less
factual, more Cinderella or Circe than mortal. There have been other megablonds
of varying skills, a pinup parade of Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Jayne
Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren and Madonna — but why does Marilyn still seem to have
patented the peroxide that they've passed along?
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