Found in the Nude

The Marilyn Monroe biopic nobody needs

“There was my name, up in lights. I said God, somebody’s made a mistake. But there it was, in lights.”

Never, no, never would she ever. It just was not something she could do. It was not something nice girls would do. But the photographer man said, “If you ever change your mind, just call me anytime.”

Other gigs paid five dollars here, ten dollars there. This one would pay fifty dollars. And right now, she really needed fifty dollars.

So she said yes, but. Yes, but please don’t let anyone else be there, except your wife. Yes, but please don’t make me show my face. Yes, but please don’t tell anyone I did this, ever. Promise me, please.

He promised. So she did it. After two hours, they handed her the release. She signed it “Mona Monroe.”

Flash-forward thirteen years. She is doing publicity photos for a new film. She has been instructed to come out to the pool in a flesh-colored bathing suit, so that it will look like she’s swimming in the nude. Finally, a figure emerges. She slips in and paddles to the edge. When she lifts herself up, the photographers suddenly realize that they aren’t looking at a bathing suit. They are looking at Marilyn Monroe, in the flesh.

We’ve had documentaries. We’ve had a miniseries. We’ve had stilted biopics. But what we haven’t had yet, what we really want to see, is Marilyn Monroe: The NC-17 Cut. At least, that’s what we’re being told by director Andrew Dominik, whose forthcoming Netflix release Blonde is creating early buzz. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s sprawling fictionalization of the Monroe mythos, it’s sure to provoke viewers, for whom Netflix initially tried to temper the content before yielding to Dominik. True to its source material, the final uncut product will run nearly three hours long. Dominik couldn’t be happier. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the f***ing audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office. It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe. It’s kind of what you want, right?”

The original novel, written in 2000, drew polarized reactions. The literary establishment nominated it for a Pulitzer. For other reviewers, it was an insult to the icon’s memory, a sleazy, hyper-indulgent Frankenstein’s monster of a work. Kirkus Reviews dismissed it in deliciously short, sharp fashion.

Still, it has occasional moments when Oates suddenly remembers that she’s an actual writer with some actual talent. Perhaps the most brutal is one of the scenes written in Marilyn’s own fractured stream-of-consciousness. The aspiring starlet is invited to the office of the illustrious producer “Mr. Z,” where he’s promised to give her a privileged glimpse of his famous prized aviary. Except, once she gets there, she realizes all the birds are dead. A voice like her mother’s begins to play in her mind as she peers through the glass: All dead birds are female, there is something female about being dead.

She hobbles out of the office some time later with her makeup smeared, her behind aching from the invasion of hard rubber. She’s not sure how much later it is, because while It was happening, she had lost track. She remembers bits and pieces—the white tiger rug, the smell of garlic on his breath, the cold voice saying Get down, Blondie.

The secretary gives her a disdainful look and quietly informs her, “There’s a powder room just outside.”

On the screen, we’ve been warned that what happens in Mr. Z’s office will leave nothing to the imagination. This is one contributing factor to the extra-restrictive rating. We’ve also been told that a scene will feature a “vaginal POV shot,” whatever that means. It’s kind of what we want, apparently.

Lead actress Ana de Armas has spoken out to say she is proud of the work, even though it forced her to go to some “uncomfortable places.” It’s not that she enjoys walking naked around set, she tells us. But she feels the project demanded it. It was the only way to be “real and honest” about some of those “moments” that made Marilyn Marilyn—or, more accurately, those moments Joyce Carol Oates has imagined might have made Marilyn Marilyn.

Oates herself has praised the film ahead of its release. It’s a “feminist” vision, she assures us, immersed in Monroe’s perspective rather than “the male gaze.”

But who is anyone kidding here, really? What do people think Andrew Dominik means when he says, “It’s what you want to see, right?” What is “it?” Who is “you?” What is “want?”

Ironically, Oates’s original novel dishonors one of the very few men in Marilyn Monroe’s life who truly did see her as “something more than sexual” (to quote The Song). A character named “Bucky” is a thinly veiled caricature of James Dougherty, the man who first called himself Marilyn’s husband while she was still “Norma Jeane.” An affectionate, uncomplicated soul, James married her under semi-arranged circumstances, as a way to ensure that his 15-year-old neighbor wasn’t sent back to an orphanage. With her father gone, her mother in an institution, and no other competent guardians, the only options were to put her back into the system or find her a suitable husband. At the time, James was about five years older than the shy but luminous girl next door. They had begun to develop a friendship when he drove her to and from school. But marriage had never occurred to him, until the day his mother floated the idea “as a kind of favor.” Despite the circumstances, their union would be lusty and happy—at first.

But for all the tender, loving care James poured out on Norma Jeane, he sensed a dark cloud perpetually hovering over her, a deep fear of abandonment that he couldn’t drive away no matter how hard he tried. It was for this reason that when she told him she wanted children, he gently told her that he thought they should wait. Wait until she was ready. Wait until there was no risk that if he fought and died in the war, their child would suffer the same fate as Norma Jeane herself. It was a choice that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Dougherty unfolds all this and more in his book To Norma Jeane, With Love, Jimmie. It’s exactly what the title promises: a love letter. The last, heartfelt goodbye of a man who’s lived a full life, who sees the truth with clear eyes, and who has never stopped thinking about what might have been. He would always say that he never knew Marilyn Monroe. He only knew Norma Jeane. That was enough for a lifetime.

But in Oates’s warped, feminist vision, Dougherty morphs into a borderline predatory sex hog. Gone is all the tenderness, deep insight, and discretion that so clearly come through in his memoir. Where the real James was stopped cold by that fateful first calendar shoot of his beloved Norma Jeane, trying to understand how they ever talked her into it, the cartoon “Bucky” passes around his own “shots” of her for friends to gawk at. There might be more vicious character distortions in other histories turned fiction, but this has to rank near the top. Perhaps it’s because Oates struggles to portray a “male gaze” that is pure and blameless, untainted with predation. That would be a piece that didn’t belong. It wouldn’t fit the grand narrative of Marilyn Monroe.

When the news came that she had died, James was a cop in the LAPD. A co-worker called the department and told him, “Your ex-wife is dead.” He hung up and spent the day avoiding reporters in a squad car, feeling as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.

He may not have been the only man who genuinely loved her. Joe DiMaggio would famously claim her body, banning all but a few from the memorial. He would never remarry, and for decades thereafter, he kept flowers on her grave. Though the two men never met, perhaps, in this, they silently held something in common.

But only one man was first. Only one man saw Norma Jean’s nakedness before any other man had ever seen it. Only one man can speak the final word over her dead body. It is all anyone needs. It is all there is to say.

“What’ll they be calling you?” I asked as I put the papers on a small table.

“From now on, Jimmie, I’ll be called Marilyn Monroe.”

“What?” I said. It was such an odd name. It didn’t fit my Norma Jeane. No. No. Not at all.

“Marilyn Monroe. Oh, isn’t it lovely! Isn’t it the most beautiful name you’ve ever heard?” Norma Jeane just beamed with happiness. She again began to twirl about the room, her arms above her head.

“Oh Jimmie,” she gushed, her mouth wide with joy, “please, tell me you like it. It's important to me that you like the name. Please! What do you think of it?”

I could hardly believe she cared what my opinion was about this. But, maybe in fact she did.

“How did they dream that name up?” I asked her, but there was a lump in my throat. Not only was I losing my beloved Norma Jeane, she in fact wouldn’t even be Norma Jeane any longer. I was seeing a weird departure here right before my eyes. How could someone right in front of you begin to vanish like that? It was surreal. Horrifying but still mesmerizing in a way. I stood still and watched her. She was “morphing” in front of me. It made me dizzy. Something final was happening, and I knew it. Something dearer to me than anything in the universe was flitting away from me like a small, magical sprite riding off on a sunbeam, never, ever to come back. And I knew it. I knew it. I wanted to reach out and snatch her back, to hold her safely here, in the normal world, with me to protect and love her, but one cannot really catch a sunbeam in one’s arms and so I did not try. I had absolutely no more hope.

“I chose Marilyn from one of my grandmothers and Monroe from my mother’s maiden name, and the studio liked it! Isn't it just too perfect?” And again, she began a small dance of joy. “It’s just so, so beautiful!” And she began to sing the name over and over in her clear, sweet voice as she danced around the room. I watched her through tears and thought I’d never seen such a beautiful sight. And knew I never would again. I never did.