Marilyn Monroe hoped to shed her sex symbol status when she starred in 1961’s “The Misfits,” her last completed film — but the movie star was plagued with problems before she met a sudden end.
One of Hollywood’s most recognized actresses passed away in 1962 at age 36. Over 100 photos of the icon taken by photojournalist and friend Eve Arnold, including some never-before-seen shots, are now being featured in a new book, “Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold.”
“I’m always very keen to show the breadth of Eve’s work, but there is this enduring fascination and love for Marilyn Monroe,” Michael Arnold, Eve Arnold’s grandson, told Fox News Digital.
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“Eve photographed Marilyn over a number of years,” he said. “She was known for her ability to get to know her subjects and form a close bond with them, which makes her work very different. It’s much more candid. She wanted to capture the genuine person behind the persona. And Marilyn Monroe is one of the people that she was able to do that with because of the friendship they had.”
Michael said Monroe leaned on his grandmother for support while on the set of “The Misfits.” While Monroe’s husband, playwright Arthur Miller, wrote the script for her as a gift, their marriage disintegrated while filming. The couple divorced shortly before the film’s premiere after nearly five years of marriage.
“Marilyn was really struggling at the time, and struggling for several reasons,” Michael explained. “Partly because her marriage to Arthur Miller was breaking down. I think she was going through the process of the divorce. But also, because she’d created this persona. She’d had this fantasy of what she wanted to be. And I think she got to the point in her career where she started to realize that, ultimately, it wasn’t going to fulfill her in the way that she hoped it would.”
Michael said Monroe was eager to finally take on more serious roles. However, she also developed an addiction to prescription pills. According to reports, it’s also likely Monroe was suffering from mental health problems, including depression, as well as physical ailments like endometriosis.
Hollywood was supposed to give Monroe freedom from a turbulent childhood. But it led to disappointment, Michael pointed out.
“She was an orphan from a very young age,” he said. “She saw that her way out of poverty and her way to have a meaningful life was to [be] this star. And she did that, and she was extremely successful at doing that. But I think towards the end, as Eve described it, she realized that the fantasy wasn’t what she was hoping for. And I think that reality was… crashing down on her.”
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“She wasn’t sleeping,” Michael continued. “She was taking sleeping pills. She would often turn up on the set several hours late or sometimes miss whole days of shooting. So, I think it was a very challenging time for her. I think she was really struggling emotionally.”
According to the book, Monroe’s mood “shifted like clouds passing across the sun.” There were numerous rewrites during filming, which made it difficult for her to memorize lines. She also found herself “frustrated” as her co-stars “scan the new words, absorb them, then go before the camera word-perfect.”
“There were all of these incredibly polished actors,” said Michael. “[And] she was very self-conscious.”
In the book, Arnold recalled how during filming, Monroe was often “touching, hugging, sitting on laps.” It seemed “like a cry for help.”
And while Monroe was disappointed with being portrayed as a “dumb blonde,” she wasn’t shy about making a bold statement as an actress.
At one point, Monroe, trying to please her director John Huston, showed her breasts during a love scene with co-star Clark Gable. It wasn’t part of the script, but Monroe felt it was the way the scene should have been played. Arnold later noted that during the ‘60s, frontal nudity was a rarity in films, but Monroe thought “she was doing something praiseworthy.”
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According to the book, Huston allowed Monroe to finish the scene her way. But once cameras stopped rolling, he cut it from the film.
“I’ve seen ‘em before,” he told Monroe when she looked at him for approval.
“Let’s get the people away from the television sets,” Monroe reflected, as quoted in the book. “I love to do things the censors wouldn’t pass. After all, what are we all here for, just to stand around and let it pass us by? Gradually, they’ll let down the censorship — sadly, probably not in my lifetime.”
Monroe was hoping “The Misfits” would be her pathway to getting more serious roles. It was a box office bomb.
“Unfortunately, from a box office point of view, it wasn’t that successful because I think people got used to her playing… that sexpot role,” said Michael. “Even though she tried to break out of it, she’d been typecast. And I think that’s still the case. These days, people don’t realize how astute and how intelligent and how well-read she was. She may not have had a formal education, but she was incredibly sharp.”
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“And I think that’s one of the things Eve wanted to set the record straight on when she published her book on Marilyn Monroe originally in the 1980s,” Michael continued. “For a long time, after Marilyn died… Eve saw a lot of books coming out that were portraying [her] in a light she didn’t approve of. She didn’t see it as a fitting tribute to Marilyn. That’s why she ended up publishing her book [at the time] because she wanted to set the record straight on certain things and give her account of her time with Marilyn, their friendship, getting to know her and how she felt she really was.”
Michael said that previous photographers were “really focused on the sex symbol and flirtatiousness” of Monroe’s persona. But when Monroe was photographed by Arnold, the two women developed a friendship.
“When Eve arrived on the set of ‘The Misfits,’ Marilyn was in a very fragile state,” said Michael. “But she trusted Eve. She felt Eve was someone she could be herself with.”
Monroe invited Arnold to photograph her in Madison Square Garden for President John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration in May 1962. It was there that she famously sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” Arnold, who had just returned from a long trip to Europe on assignment, couldn’t make it.
The women never met again.
“[Eve] was traveling all around the world, and she turned it down,” said Michael. “But Marilyn wanted her to go and photograph her singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Kennedy. [Eve] said she always regretted not going and photographing her then. And then it was shortly after that [Marilyn] died.”
Monroe passed away in August of that year. Arnold died in 2012 at age 99.
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“Eve was aiming to humanize the people she photographed, and that included the work she did with Marilyn,” said Michael. “At the time… photography in Hollywood was very glamorized. It wasn’t so much about the real person, it was about the image. I think Eve… started to popularize the idea that you could show something genuine about the person.”
