reported<\/a> making $80 million from merchandising her name and image in a year. TJ Maxx sells Marilyn Monroe underwear.<\/p>\nMarilyn earned a small fraction of what peers like Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Russell did. She got only $500 a week when she was the blonde in \u201cGentlemen Prefer Blondes\u201d with Russell. She bought her first house, a small hacienda in Brentwood, with furnishings from Mexico, the year she died.<\/p>\n
So why has she persisted as the most shimmery sex symbol all around the world?<\/p>\n
In one of the poems she scribbled in her notebook, Marilyn described herself as \u201cstrong as a cobweb in the Wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hollywood has always had a perch for curvy, sultry blondes \u2014 from Jean Harlow to Kim Novak to Jayne Mansfield to Pamela Anderson to Sydney Sweeney.<\/p>\n
But Marilyn was one of a kind, embodying our deepest fantasies, ensnared in a film-noir triangle with President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general. The woman was more interesting than the myth.<\/p>\n
As Sam Wasson, the author of several best-selling books about Hollywood, put it: \u201cShe can be anything to anyone. She is the American dream in darkness and in light \u2014 her rise story comforts us to think dreams can come true and her decline story comforts us to think maybe we\u2019re better off if our dreams don\u2019t come true. From the feminist angle, she is equally versatile: She can be seen as defiant or a victim of exploitation, an artist or an object. Also, you can\u2019t underestimate what dying young does for your longevity!\u201d<\/p>\n
Leon Wieseltier, the editor of the journal \u201cLiberties,\u201d said Marilyn cast her spell by radiating \u201chappy carnality, which is why her harsh treatment by men seems especially mean. She tried and tried to be \u2018serious,\u2019 but there was no point. She was doomed to be a fantasy. That\u2019s what Billy Wilder saw: that she was both incendiary and na\u00efve. She brought the news that desire is just as exciting when it is sunny as when it is dark.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilder, who directed Marilyn in \u201cThe Seven Year Itch\u201d and \u201cSome Like It Hot,\u201d was also bewildered by Marilyn\u2019s ability to bewitch, calling her surprising and intuitive in every scene. Even when she made him wait while she cowered in her dressing room, or blew a line \u2014 like \u201cWhere\u2019s the bourbon?\u201d \u2014 80 straight takes, he forgave her, savoring her \u201celegant vulgarity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I\u2019ve said before, I\u2019ve got an old aunt in Vienna who would say every line perfectly,\u201d Wilder told Cameron Crowe, laughing. \u201cBut who would see such a picture?\u201d<\/p>\n
As Marilyn herself noted, \u201cGlamour cannot be manufactured.\u201d It\u2019s magic.<\/p>\n
\u201cFame isn\u2019t everything,\u201d she told the LIFE editor Richard Meryman in her last interview, in 1962. \u201cIt warms you a bit. But that warming is temporary. It\u2019s like caviar. It\u2019s good to have caviar, but if you had it every damn day, you know?\u201d She laughed. \u201cToo much caviar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m excited about the big birthday celebration. Not the crass party that President Trump is having for America\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1591,33470,96369,96368,158,9,11,10,36021],"class_list":["post-257532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-actors-and-actresses","tag-birthdays","tag-marilyn","tag-monroe","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-poetry-and-poets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}