THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRESENTS Marilyn Monroe: Celluloid Dream

This year marks the centenary of Norma Jeane Mortenson's birth. Yet in a perfect encapsulation of the Hollywood dream—and nightmare—that identity was overtaken by a character that is part reality (Norma Jeane's) and part fiction (Hollywood's): Marilyn Monroe. Like many other orphans, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe saw in cinema a way to compensate for a traumatic youth without a family and a home. After working as a pin-up model, she made the transition to film, and gradually built an audience by always making a major impact in minor roles. Then, in 1952, she helped bring sex into American homes when Playboy published nude photos of her in its inaugural edition. Monroe admitted to having made them without shame, revealing a sexual candor that infused the unforgettable persona she introduced in the torrid Niagara (1953), her first film with top billing. Though she is frequently described as the greatest sex symbol of all time, that distinction fails to capture the true depth of her talent. For Hollywood, Monroe was the perfect dumb blonde bombshell, an embodiment of the wildest fantasies of a male audience. For Norma Jeane, Marilyn was a persona, crafted by an actor who dreamed of playing Dostoevsky's Grushenka, that masterfully exposed the inanity of those male fantasies by becoming one of the greatest comedic performers of all time. Though she was mocked by the industry and besieged by her own insecurities, her desire for dramatic roles and greater creative independence led her to leave Hollywood for the Actors Studio and create her own production company. She was, in essence, denouncing an outdated studio system whose death was poetically portrayed in The Misfits (1961), her final completed film role. Following her tragic death at 36, Marilyn's fascinating complexity—now entwined with the bright and dark elements of cinema, the predatory machinations of a crumbling studio system, and our insatiable, morbid curiosity—would fuel innumerable reincarnations. Few are as affecting as those sprung from the imagination of David Lynch: the tragic Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, and nearly every frame of Mulholland Dr. (2001), the latter of which is included in this series as a tribute to Monroe's continuing influence.

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