Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon

by Charles Casillo

Overview

Based on new interviews and research, this ground-breaking biography explores the secret selves behind Marilyn Monroe’s public facades.

Marilyn Monroe. Her beauty still captivates. Her love life still fascinates. Her story still dominates popular culture. Now, drawing on years of research and dozens of new interviews, this biography cuts through decades of lies and secrets and introduces you to the Marilyn Monroe you always wanted to know: a living, breathing, complex woman, bewitching and maddening, brilliant yet flawed.

Charles Casillo studies Monroe’s life through the context of her times—in the days before feminism. Before there was adequate treatment for Marilyn’s struggle with bipolar disorder. Starting with her abusive childhood, this biography exposes how—in spite of her fractured psyche—Marilyn’s extreme ambition inspired her to transform each celebrated love affair and each tragedy into another step in her journey towards immortality. Casillo fully explores the last two years of her life, including her involvement with both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, and the mystery of her last day.

Just a few of Casillo's revelations:

*Despite reports of their bitter rivalry, Elizabeth Taylor secretly reached out and tried to help Marilyn during one of her darkest moments.

*The existence of Marilyn’s semi-nude love scene with Clark Gable—long thought to be lost.

*A few nights before she died, Marilyn encountered Warren Beatty at a party and disclosed some of the reasons for her final despair.

*A meticulously detailed account of the events of her last day, revealing how a series of miscommunications and misjudgments contributed to her death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250624529
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/18/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	183,157
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Charles Casillo is the author of The Marilyn Diaries, The Fame Game, Boys, Lost & Found, and Outlaw: The Lives and Careers of John Rechy. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and many others. His movies include "Let Me Die Quietly" and "Fetish."

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part 1 A Broken Girl

1 Mama 5

2 Struggle for Survival 12

3 Be a Good Girl 18

4 The World Became Friendly 30

5 "A Stray Little Kitten" 40

6 Rising 51

7 Important Meetings 60

8 The Talk of Hollywood 69

Part 2 The Preferred Blonde

9 Melting the Screen 77

10 Dissatisfactions 87

11 "Elegant Vulgarity" 94

12 Marilyn Inc. 101

13 New York Actress 108

14 "A Different Suit" 118

15 Innocent Monster 127

16 Marriage 135

17 Marilyn Gets Hot 144

18 Truth 152

19 Making Love 156

20 An Unfit Misfit 168

21 A Woman Alone 177

22 Nightmare 186

23 Manic-Depressive 196

24 Age Three Five 207

25 Doctor-Patient Relations 215

Part 3 Close to Camelot

26 Compartmentalization 227

27 "Negated Sex Symbol" 234

28 Starting Something 244

29 Mass Seduction 250

30 Is Marilyn Finished? 258

31 Elizabeth and Marilyn 265

32 Last Sittings 269

33 Sleepwalking 281

34 Anger and Despair 293

35 Miscommunications 304

36 "We've Lost Her" 310

Epilogue: Lingering Radiance 316

Acknowledgments 319

Notes 325

Bibliography 347

Index 353

Editorial Reviews

This biography from Casillo fleshes out the icon, telling Monroe’s tale in great and often harrowing detail and showing how the notorious blond pin-up was smarter and shrewder than most realize, yet just as tragic as we knew.” —New York Post, “Most Unforgettable Books of 2018”

“After all I've seen and heard about Marilyn Monroe, this book is a revelation, an earthy, empathic vision of a real woman who happened to be an ethereal goddess. Getting to know Charles Casillo's Marilyn made me feel a level of identification and understanding that was devastating and thrilling.” —Mary Gaitskill

"A refreshing take on the complex and talented Monroe....A+." —Tulsa Book Review

"Casillo explores the myriad facets of Monroe’s personality with a respectful but incisive eye...an intricately nuanced portrait of this misunderstood idol...A worthy addition to the Monroe canon." –Booklist

“A well-written examination of the mystique of a woman who still fascinates decades after her untimely death.”—Publishers Weekly

“A deep dive into the model and screen legend’s glamorous but troubled life…[Casillo] pays particularly sympathetic attention to her emotional journey…a compelling exploration of a beguiling film icon’s life.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Extraordinary…Castillo's sympathetic and psychologically nuanced Marilyn Monroe bio is compulsively readable and well researched.” —Shelf Awareness

“Charles Casillo has managed to further peel back the layers on one of our most complex modern day heroines.” —Stanley Buchthal, co-editor of Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

From the Publisher

05/28/2018
This sympathetic biography, with its extensive bibliography and detailed notes, is a solid addition to the already vast library about the legendary star, even though Casillo (The Fame Game) produces no startlingly new insights. Applying present-day hindsight to Monroe’s life, from her unstable upbringing to her death at 36, Casillo highlights the long-lasting damage from Monroe’s childhood neglect and sexual abuse, and how it contributed to her later struggles with drugs, alcohol, and mental health issues. He also shows how often others, including the Kennedy brothers and her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, sought to use the sex symbol for their own purposes, even as Monroe desperately pinned her hopes on these men and others to help her achieve personal and professional fulfillment. More than half a century later, the poor medical care Monroe received for her frequent bouts of suicidal depression and her inappropriate relationships with medical professionals—like many, dazzled by her fame and charisma—remain appalling. Casillo occasionally overreaches when applying modern expectations to a very different era, but he provides readers with a well-written examination of the mystique of a woman who still fascinates decades after her untimely death. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Thérèse Plummer’s over-the-top narration and several mispronunciations of celebrated people’s names are distracting elements in this audiobook. The author presents it as having both new information and new perspectives on the troubled life and somewhat mysterious death of American movie icon Marilyn Monroe. Emphasizing her final two years, the audiobook has an emotional tone that is frantic and given to the sensational. Plummer’s attempts to assume the voices of many of the characters are less than spot-on. Monroe’s boundless ambition and psychological struggles are set against the times in which she lived; details and anecdotes are backed up with significant detail and research. Listeners will decide from their own perspectives whether fresh insight and facts are present here. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

2018-05-06
A deep dive into the model and screen legend's glamorous but troubled life.In the decades since Marilyn Monroe's (1926-1962) death, our fascination with her remains strong. Her allure has sparked the imaginations of talents ranging from Andy Warhol to Joyce Carol Oates to the producers of the TV series Smash, and she has been the subject of countless biographies. In his latest book, Casillo (The Marilyn Diaries, 2014, etc.) rehashes much family material about Monroe, but he pays particularly sympathetic attention to her emotional journey. Delving into the well-known narrative points, he begins with Monroe's unhappy and frequently abusive childhood. Dependent on a single mother who was suffering from severe mental health issues, she was frequently put into foster care and at one point abandoned in an orphanage. As Monroe blossomed into a stunningly attractive young woman, a modeling career quickly led to minor film roles and subsequent star turns in such 1950s classics as Gentleman Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch. While developing into one of the most famous movie stars of her time, she increasingly struggled with deep insecurities and dependency on pills and alcohol. Her acting talent continued to expand, but by the early 1960s, her personal life was plummeting. Often feeling paralyzed by low self-esteem working in front of the camera, she often displayed erratic behavior that caused long delays on film sets. This accelerated during production of her last completed film, The Misfits, and influenced a fatal blow with her dismissal from the ill-fated Something's Got to Give. Casillo focuses a good portion of the book on Monroe's fragile emotional state in these remaining years. She had an obsessive fear of aging and losing her sexual appeal. While not offering much new information, the author thoughtfully re-examines the facts and myths surrounding the events leading to Monroe's death, touching on her affairs with both John and Robert Kennedy and her continued substance abuse problems. A compelling exploration of a beguiling film icon's life—a significant if not quite definitive addition to the ever expanding Monroe literature.

Kirkus Reviews