The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe:
The Unheard Tapes
Interest in the death of the legendary sex symbol continues as shown in a new Netflix documentary.
The curiosity about the unexplained deaths of the famous never goes away, particularly if there is no clear evidence of the cause of death. In the celebrity industry there has always been doubt around the demise of, say, Judy Garland - an accidental death or suicide from an overdose? Did Natalie Wood fall or was she pushed? Was it Superman's George Reeves who fired the bullet that killed him? And, perhaps, the biggest question of all, why did Princess Diana have to die?
Theories have abounded about the passing of Marilyn Monroe since she died in August 1962 and, although most theories reckon that the actress, in a state of complete depression, died of an accidental overdose, there is still the nagging thought that it might have been suicide or murder. Anthony Simmons, a reporter and the author of Goddess, a book about Marilyn Monroe, started researching the circumstances of the actress's death when the Los Angeles County District Attorney re-opened the case. Simmons spent three years gathering over six hundred taped interviews with those who knew Marilyn or who had theories about the circumstances of her demise. The results of his research are in Emma Cooper's compelling documentary which is, of course, still as fascinating and mysterious as the original case ever was.
Visually there is not much to see during the interviews except heads talking into a telephone, set against the continual unreeling of tapes spinning round and round. Tying everything together, however, is archive footage of the famous who knew or worked with the actress, including agent Al Rosen, hairdresser Gladys Whitten, ambulance man Ken Hunter and Eunice Murray, the actress's housekeeper, among many other witnesses. Where there is no visual footage of the actual witnesses, the vocal recordings are lip-synced by actors assuming the roles of, for instance, director John Huston, hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff, restaurateur Gloria Romanoff, actresses Jane Russell and Thelma Ritter, and singer Dean Martin.
The nub of the story is that Marilyn always wanted to be a good actress like her favourite star Jean Harlow and set out to do the best she could but, because of her troubled childhood when she was not used to being happy, she sought solace from affairs with powerful men who, especially in the film industry, took advantage of her naiveté. She claimed that sex was not all that important for her, although she did want children. Sadly, she did not seek help but tried unsuccessfully to find some kind of hope in her world.
Moreover, she had little success with her marriages to the police officer James Dougherty, the baseball player Joe DiMaggio or the playwright Arthur Miller and she became increasingly dependent on prescription drugs which made her difficult to work with. She also became involved with the Kennedy family but eventually they cut her off, isolating themselves from Marilyn as she gradually became more of a problem. She felt she was being used by men and queried whether she could ever find true happiness. She admitted that fame had its compensations but also its drawbacks. In the end she suffered a kind of paranoid masochism.
It is still an absorbing case history in which Summers propounds differing theories about when and where Marilyn died - at home, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital or in the hospital itself, even though she was officially found dead in bed at home possibly due to suicide or accidental death. Was there a conspiracy theory, a cover-up? In this case the jury will be forever out...
MICHAEL DARVELL
With archive footage of Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, Lauren Bacall, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Peter Lawford, Jimmy Hoffa, plus narration by reporter Anthony Summers.
Dir Emma Cooper, Pro Emma Cooper and Chris Smith, Ph Geoffrey Sentamu, Ed Gregor Lynn, Music Anne Nikitin.
Empress Films/Library Films-Netflix.
101 mins. USA. 2022. Rel: 27 April 2022. Available on Netflix. Cert 12A.