Marilyn Monroe – The Last Interview


This is the last interview Marilyn Monroe ever gave. It was for Life Magazine in 1962. The interviewer is editor Richard Meryman. The film includes various pieces of Monroe documentary and news footage. As she speaks, she seems delicate and somewhat forced in her cheerful girlishness. I’ve never given much a damn about Monroe. I view her as one of those totally false put-ons of sexuality that worked for a while because of the grotesque and revolting American male of the 1950s. Men were so totally warped about their own bodies and what they thought women should be that they were willing to worship one who walked out and turned them all into jokes. That’s Monroe – a vicious mockery of American sexuality in the 50s. She knew it and she couldn’t find a way out of the role she had chosen.

A Barefoot Reader of Ulysses

That’s Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses.  That look on her face – a mix of befuddled interest and confused determination – is exactly how I read Ulysses.  Monroe apparently kept a copy of the book in her car and stuck with the damn thing for a long time.  You’ve got to wonder about this woman.  She probably should have stayed far away from Kennedy and stuck a little closer to the things she really liked.

Strangely enough, it happens to be June 16th which is worldwide Bloomsday, when Ulysses is celebrated with public readings.

Via Dangerous Minds