So many of Marilyn Monroe’s photographs are iconic. The one shot during the shoot of ‘The Seven Year Itch’ – in which her white dress billows up with the wind is probably the most famous picture of her. Her centerpiece appearance in the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953 is also another popular one for Monroe fans. But what recently caught my attention were literally the ‘literary’ ones.
Philippe Halsman did a series of photographs of Monroe in her apartment in which her book-collection features. These photographs have all the hallmarks of a Marilyn Monroe shoot – glamour, diaphanous garments, lingerie, erotic poses – and in this case, a bookshelf to boot. Over her career, books kept appearing in many of Monroe’s photographs. So much so that there’s even a dedicated Pinterest page called ‘MM loved to read’!
But of all the photographs, the most meta one for me was Eve Arnold’s 1955 shot of Monroe immersed in James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. The image is enchanting and beguiling.
Ulysses was banned in the UK and the US in the 1920s for its alleged obscenity. It was only in the 30s that the ban was revoked. (Coincidentally, my previous post had a reference to Nehru picking up his copy of the Ulysses from Shakespeare and Co in Paris.)The post-ban edition of the book carried an extensive synopsis of the legal arguments against the ban and included a message from Joyce himself. It was this edition that Monroe holds in the photograph. Judging from the section opened, many believe that the passage she was reading was probably the most erotic one in all of English literature – Molly Bloom’s monologue and Joyce’s reaffirmation of female choice and sexual freedom. Could there have been a better model than Monroe to drive home the point.
… I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
(Read the whole soliloquy here)
Was Monroe a reader?
When she died in 1962 (at the age of 36), she left behind close to 400 books. Browsing this catalogue of her book-collection, I could spot Bertrand Russel, Martin Buber, Kazantzakis, Tennessee Williams, Blake, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Oppenheimer, Joyce, Graham Greene, Flaubert and most surprisingly even our own RK Narayan’s ‘Guide‘, published in 1958, figured in the catalogue. (Never did I ever imagine I would associate RK Narayan with Marilyn Monroe)
In Portable Magic, the critic Emma Smith writes:
In October 1999 the sale at Christie’s, New York, of the personal property of Marilyn Monroe raised $13 million. Under the hammer were the star’s stilettos, denim jeans, a photo of Joe DiMaggio, dresses, scripts – and her books. A large Monroe library included works by Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Ian Fleming, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Colette, Dorothy Parker and Jack Kerouac. Titles including The New Joy of Cooking, a book of Hebrew prayers (Monroe converted to Judaism on her marriage to Miller), a Bible and Watty Piper’s children’s book The Little Engine that Could in a 1930 edition that may have been with her since her childhood round out her selfportrait. Among the book lots was, of course, that 1934 American edition of Ulysses as captured by Eve Arnold; it sold for $9,200. Like Anne Clifford and Madame de Pompadour before her, Monroe’s self-conscious manipulation of her image showed an astute understanding of books and their social significations. Her Ulysses portrait plays on an apparent juxtaposition between sex symbol and literary seriousness to project a bookishly independent woman engaged in and shaped by her own choice of reading.
Monroe was and still is widely seen as the quintessential ‘dumb blonde’. One has to critically examine what intent did the photographers have while juxtaposing her sensuous images with the intellectual symbolism of books. Was she played? Did she play along? Or was she just marrying two personas – the bombshell and the bookworm- which were never really contradictory for her? One might never know for sure. But my appreciation of Monroe has gone up many notches.
Manish Mohandas 