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IN A LENGTHY, SINGLE-SPACED, TWO-AND-A-HALF-PAGE TYPEWRITTEN CRITIQUE of the Actor's Studio production of Strawhead, Norman Mailer's fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, Marilyn, Of Women and Their Elegance, and Strawhead. Mailer's biographers have also noted how beguiled he was with the topic. Robert Merrill calls it "a continuting obsession".[1] Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer, with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been "fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe",[2] introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex. The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.
It is hard to know exactly when this "obsession" began. Mailer claimed on a number of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the "Hollywood Politics" chapter of Peter Manso's biography. She contradicts Mailer's claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in
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Hollywood in 1948.[3] Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to camera and fans.[a] The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.[b] Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to "piling on" and on occasion "late hits" or "low blows," to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer's literary excesses.
Notes
- ↑ Guiles spells it "Jeane" in Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe, as does Leaming in Marilyn. Mailer spells it "Jean".
- ↑ This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When his is asked in an imaginary court scene, Mailer answers the Prosecutor's question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, "No, but I sat behind her once at (the) Actor's Studio" ("Before" 33).
Citations
- ↑ Merrill 1992, p. 9.
- ↑ Leeds 2002, p. 20.
- ↑ Manso 1985, p. 131.
Works Cited
- Leeds, Barry H. (2002). The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer. Bainbridge Island, WA: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.
- Manso, Peter (1985). Mailer. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- Merrill, Robert (1992). Norman Mailer Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers.