Marilyn: Behind the Icon

Someone once remarked, “The world called her Marilyn, as if it knew her well.”

Marilyn Monroe was the pin-up of pin-ups, the starlet of starlets and the sex symbol of the 20th century, but a new book of photography by her friend, the photographer Bruno Bernard, reveals the girl behind the star.

“That image of hers with the flying skirt and the transparent white panties, showing the world that she was not blonde all over. She had no shame about it. And this was before women’s liberation. She embraced her sexuality as empowerment,” says author Susan Bernard, promoting her new book Marilyn: Intimate Exposures. “She knew what she was doing. She used the nude calendar and was very candid about it, which was rare at the time. I think that because of Marilyn, women of that time looked at each other differently.”

2012 marks the 50th year since Marilyn Monroe’s death. November 2011 ushered in the film My Week with Marilyn, the canary in the coal mine for the inevitable onslaught of Monroe-related content that will surely follow. As the momentous anniversary approaches, the pundits will seek to breathe meaning into this iconic celebrity. But who was behind the masquerade of “Marilyn”?

Lifestyler spoke with Susan Bernard, daughter of Bruno, the man whom Monroe herself recognized as the photographer who discovered her.

“I wanted to honour Marilyn and my father. He was the person who discovered her and witnessed the transition between Norma Jean and Marilyn. This book is not just about pretty photos but about my father’s observations about Marilyn,” says Susan.

“Remember, Bernie, everything started with you,” exclaimed Monroe to whoever was listening on the set of The Seven Year Itch, the film that brought us that frozen-in-time moment when Marilyn let the wind below lift her white dress to expose her panties.

Bruno enjoyed an incredibly successful career including being the subject of a 50-year retrospective by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first stills photographer to earn that honour, in 1984. “He was called the king of glamour photos yet he was most proud that he was called the man who discovered Marilyn Monroe,” remembers Susan.

Monroe’s beauty endures even if by nature it was not made to last. Abandoned as a child, the girl was forever rudderless. Beauty, like glory, surely fades. Anything otherwise would be an impossibility, against the laws of nature. Yet because Monroe was captured in that youthful state, remembered in perpetuity through film and photography, we remember her as that youthful woman, detached from the natural aging process.

Once upon a time… 
It is July 1946. Norma Jean Dougherty is walking down Sunset Boulevard, past a dentist’s office where Hollywood photographer Bruno Bernard is exiting. Kismet — destiny — as Marilyn would have said.

In his notes, Bruno recalls the moment: “… I groggily left the office with a swollen cheek and slowly made my way back to my studio a few blocks away. While I was making up my mind whether to cancel my next appointment a dazzling teenager with a voluptuous figure wiggled by. She had curves in all the right places and she moved with the unadulterated movements of Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm when they were stripping on the stage of the Burbank Theater on Main Street... I found my arm waving and my mouth whistling the lovely vision to a halt. A rather rude method, I must admit.

“I said, ‘Miss, this is strictly professional. I’d like to take some photo tests of you.’”

Bruno’s photographs were by their essence a significant part of how we remember the icon. He discovered Norma Jean Dougherty and through his work she was elevated from an unwanted daughter of a mentally unstable woman to the world’s most desired female. While neither role would provide enduring happiness, Bruno’s early work surely gave this poor girl some material and psychological respite from a traumatic childhood.

“When he saw that peaches-and-cream complexion, the wholesome girl-next-door on a body of curves, he knew that would transcend,” says Susan.

Norma Jean is recalled to have innocently asked Bruno, “Gee, do you really think I can make it as a cover girl model?” To which the seasoned photographer replied, “Darling, my camera never lies.”

“My father saw in her the girl-next-door, long before Playboy magazine built a business on nude pictorials of the girl-next-door. It was a more innocent time. My father wanted to portray the girl that the GIs fought for. At that time, there was a whole culture of fighting for the girls back home,” relates Susan.

Bruno could relate to Norma Jean in many ways. He too had been an orphan, the result of his parents’ ill health. While he starred in his orphanage’s theatrical productions, he also loved academics that led him to university where he eventually completed a doctorate in law. Born a German Jew, Bruno would later escape from Nazi Germany to make his way in America. Never forgetting his past, he longed to champion the underdog, perhaps a star-crossed reason for why it was he who was responsible for Norma Jean’s rapid ascendency into Hollywood’s stratosphere.

“He was the perfect guy to champion a poor girl such as Norma Jean,” says Susan.

As Bruno writes in his notes, in Norma Jean he saw his own difficult life in Berlin: “It released my empathy for this girl born on the wrong side of the tracks who seemed hell-bent on making the American Dream come true for herself.”

“When my father’s photos of Marilyn came out in Laff magazine, Howard Hughes took interest and wanted to sign her to his studio. My father then played Hughes against 20th Century Fox Studios to get a better deal,” says Susan. “When it came time for her to do a test with Fox, my father had her do a silent screen test, which was not the standard practice. Marilyn had a squeaky voice and he didn’t think the studio would react favourably to it.”

The photographer’s advice proved correct. The cherubic Norma Jean rather quickly became the beguiling Marilyn Monroe, the symbol of female virility in her era. It is no wonder the bikini shots of Marilyn taken by Bruno caught the attention of moguls such as Hughes.

“She had that gift of being able to attract attention. Some performers know how to turn it on. She knew best how to connect with the public through the camera. Perhaps she learnt how to attract attention as a result of having been abandoned. In front of the camera, she could do anything.”

Susan, herself a bombshell girl-next-door who became Playboy Playmate for December 1966, captures something powerful when she reminds us that the origin of the word photographer is from the Greek meaning “light writer.”

Bruno’s photos inform our perception of who Monroe was and what she meant for her time. His photos wrote a powerful message through the images he captured and Norma Jean knew very well how to exploit the medium.

“She was very intelligent. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was not a victim of Hollywood. In many ways, Hollywood saved her by giving her some happiness and a life that was far removed from her difficult childhood,” suggests Susan.

“After all, she had relationships with some of the most interesting people of her time; she married two of the most fascinating men. She married the men that many a housewife dreamt of and befriended people such as Truman Capote. She had a fascinating life. After all, who is to say that her life would have been wonderful without Hollywood? For that time and place, she had travel and many experiences bestowed upon her, all of which helped her at least temporarily forget the nightmares she had as a child,” adds Susan.

In the end…
Of course, Monroe’s tragic end cannot be glazed over. She died alone of an apparent drug overdose, with the phone off the hook as though she was trying to call for help.

From his notes, Bruno is quoted as having remarked, “For millions of men all over the world, she was the most desirable love object, and yet she died at a young age, lonely and desperate because she was unable to form a permanent union of mutual love and respect with one private individual... the universally worshipped love goddess died a lonely human creature...”

“She was in great turmoil. She had dual personalities. This situation was made more difficult because she was addicted to painkillers. The studios kept her on drugs to keep her going. It was no different back then,” suggests Susan. “But I think that she was much tougher than people give her credit for. She was self-taught and curious, she was a voracious reader. What she didn’t know, she would seek to learn about.”

The tragically absurd duality of Marilyn is how she had come to represent both beauty and sexual energy yet herself was unable to have children. Perhaps this was her greatest sadness.

“She had no foundation. She wanted children, partly because she needed some attachment to something. My book’s photos show how much pain and suffering. My father took a picture the day she divorced Joe DiMaggio,” Susan relates. “My father was holding her hand as they drove away in the car. She squeezed his hand as the media photographed her. She was crying and in pain.”

It has long been suggested the reason Marilyn divorced DiMaggio is because he wanted her to be a homemaker.

“My father always said that she should have stayed with Joe DiMaggio. It was an unrequited and unconditional love, through all of her relationships and disasters,” says Susan.

Beyond death
Almost 50 years on, Marilyn should have lost her relevancy but she has not. Most of her Hollywood peers, while famous at the time, are forgotten to history whereas Marilyn continues to fascinate. Notable is the extent to which young Hollywood places Marilyn on the goddess pedestal. As Lindsay Lohan explains in the foreword to Susan’s book, there are many parallels between the lives of young movie stars today and the long-dead Marilyn.

Susan contends that, so many years later, these young stars all have their own idea of who Marilyn was. This matter of perception is clearly malleable. Perhaps we all see what we want to see.

If we do not like Hollywood, then perhaps we see in Marilyn’s demise the sins of Tinseltown. If we have a problem with outward displays of sexuality, then perhaps we see in her stunning curves the demise of society’s ethics. If we long for the days of a simpler time embraced by a united family unit, we see in her life’s story the tragedy of broken relationships. If we scoff at the celebrity machine that is Hollywood, then Marilyn’s eventual death is the result of wanton fame. All this being said, if we can for a moment separate ourselves and be completely self-aware, in this actress we all no doubt see a powerful form of feminine beauty that is for every era.

Marilyn was the poor, unwanted girl who became rich and desired. She married her country’s star athlete Joe DiMaggio and then married her country’s renowned playwright Arthur Miller. Later she had an affair with her country’s celebrated singer Frank Sinatra. Her life was a fairy tale distorted, without a happy ending yet spiked with great fits of joy throughout. Hers was a dramatic life.

It is without the slightest exaggeration to suggest that Monroe’s beauty endures. Perhaps this is simply answered by saying that Monroe did not fade away in the public eye, instead burning brightly while she lasted on this earthly plane. There may well be more to it. People like her do not come around too often.

Her impact as the very embodiment of a modern Venus is such that her name belongs with the legendary women of antiquity. One is not out of line to include the name Monroe alongside Aphrodite, Helen of Troy, the Queen of Sheba and Cleopatra. What incredible company. • 


 

Photos used with permission from Marilyn: Intimate Exposures by Susan Bernard, Sterling Publishing Copyright 2011