Distributor Film Chest jumps on a revival of interest in Marilyn Monroe predicated on the 2022 Netflix feature Blonde, an adaptation of the 2000 Joyce Carol Oates novel about the doomed cinema sex goddess. The revelation here in the three-disc set of Marilyn miscellany, also called Blonde: didjaknow there was actually a previous dramatization of Oates' novel? Directed by Joyce Chopra, it aired as a two-part broadcast on CBS in 2001 and is a chief attraction.
Dripping with 1940s-50s nostalgia, the miniseries follows the 700-page Blonde closely, except for a truncated ending (Oates yielded to conspiracy theories that a certain US president had Monroe murdered; this one lowers the curtain early). Assorted players in the Monroeverse—some other aliases, others unnamed (but clearly Arthur Miller), and Marilyn herself (Poppy Montgomery), address the camera. Drama emphasizes that loneliness, lack of a father, and a schizophrenic mother's obsession with show business tainted the former Norma Jean Baker's life (planting a never-resolved suspicion that the absent father was a movie idol).
Norma Jean's modeling gigs lead to bit movie roles—as well as a series of exploitive relationships with men (some of whom she starts to call "Daddy"). If Montgomery does not have the vibrant Monroe magic, she convincingly goes into the gloom of mental illness in the final act.
Blonde makes an interesting comparison with the even less-regarded Marilyn & Me (1991), a TV movie based on the claims by now-deceased author and B-movie director Robert Slatzer (Jesse Dabson here) that, as a freelance entertainment reporter from Ohio, he was an on/off lover of Monroe's (sex on a public beach on the first date, no less) and even briefly her husband.
Slatzer's assertions today get even less respect than self-proclaimed UFO abductees. But director John Patterson straightforwardly presents them, with an arresting Marilyn impersonation from Susan Griffiths. Material seems to hold the heroine equally up for criticism, this Marilyn is so career-driven she repeatedly spurns Slatzer's love for job opportunities, until producer Darryl Zanuck demands an end to the star's five-day-old marriage to Slatzer, or the film Niagara will never release. Underneath the ambition, we're told: Marilyn/Norma Jean desperately seeking the approval of her asylum-bound mother.
Insanity best describes Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976), a sometimes jaw-dropping, low-budget Monroesploitation from semi-notorious Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan that gained a wide theatrical release (quick with the nudity, it is the only R-rated ingredient in the set). Getting many facts wrong and depicting a 1940s Los Angeles that looks like disco-age Houston (ugly polyester suits and bellbottom slacks), the film stars Misty Rowe—voluptuous "Hee Haw" comedienne with Kim Basinger-like beauty as a Norma Jean Baker raped by most every man (plus one lesbian!) she encounters while on a treadmill of photo shoots and auditions. Imagine John Waters teaming up with National Lampoon for a Marilyn biopic, only not quite that funny.
The Legend of Marilyn Monroe offers extra material, a 1966 David Wolper TV docu-hour, hosted most melodramatically by John Huston (an invested guest; he directed Monroe's most essential films) and already erecting the mythology of a luminously tragic blonde super-starlet. Denied access to canonical Monroe clips by her main studio, 20th Century Fox, director Terry Sanders improvised with interesting alternative content - including showing Monroe's famous nude calendar picture, but as a photo negative.
Alas, not included in the compilation, the seldom-seen Marilyn (never released on disc), a 1963 docu-feature tribute from Fox and hosted by Rock Hudson, in which the studio eulogized their property. Film Chest's Blonde: The Marilyn Stories box compensates with a quite informative little brochure insert— which, incidentally, finally solves the riddle of Norma Jean's father's identity. Collections should take care not to lose that.
While a grab bag of mixed quality, the virtues of Blonde: The Marilyn Stories should still hold interest among mass-audience entertainment collections ever fascinated with the actress, although it is inescapable that borrowers might (and are meant to) confuse it with the 2022 Blonde.