Marilyn Monroe as Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich and Lillian Russell by Richard Avedon, 1958.

Marilyn Monroe wishes you all a happy Valentines Day!

Marilyn Monroe

Favourite Couples > Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio

Marilyn was the best read “dumb blonde” in movie history. Acutely conscious of her lack of official education, in adult life Marilyn was eager to read as much and as widely as she could. As a starlet she was touting major classics onto the set, and she continued to take matter - “heavy books, not light books and flight books,” as her stand in Evelyn Moriarty once said - with her when shooting her last film.

Marilyn was eclectric in her literary tastes. When Marilyn first met Arthur Miller in 1951, they went together to a bookshop where she bought poetry by Frost, Whitman and E.E Cummings. In his autobiography Timebends, Miller observes, “With no cultural pretensions to maintain, she felt no need to bother with anything that didn’t sweep her away. She could not suspend her disbelief toward fiction, wanting only literal truth as though froma document.” He also notes, “With the possible exception of Colette’s Cheri and a few short stories, however, I had not known her to read anything all the way through. There was no need to: she thought she could get the idea of the book - and often did - in a few pages.”

Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, 1959

is everyone watching the season 2 premier of SMASH tonight?

Michelle Williams as Marilyn, and Zoë Wanamaker as Paula Strasberg, and the real duo on film sets.

amazing!

This is an original picture of Marilyn Monroe visiting soldiers during the Korean war taken by my grandpas friend.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” - Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words

(via fashionfever)

Marilyn was a perfectionist

Marilyn was terrified of being mentally ill, because “madness” ran in her family. Her mother was institutionalized throughout most of her life, her grandmother had a history of mental illness, as did either her grandfather or her great-grandfather (can’t remember which). Mental illness and the fear of it hung like a dark cloud over most of her life.

Marilyn was terrified of looking “ridiculous” and being made to look like a joke. She wanted to be taken seriously as an actress and as a human being.

She didn’t say this quote, it’s not in the source stated above. Someone literally made it up and tacked her name on it.

(via sarahtude)

She’d come out of our apartment in a shleppy old coat, looking like my maid, and all the people would push her aside to get my autograph. She loved it. - Shelley Winters

Here’s one for everybody telling me that Marilyn was a size 16 when she was at her heaviest during Some Like It Hot and The Misfits.

Joan and Roger discussing Marilyn Monroe.

I don't watch Mad Men but if this is really about Marilyn, it's wonderful!

Some Like It Hot