“Marilyn By Catherine”: Pauline Sommelet’s Editorial

She would have turned 100 on June 1st Death claimed her at the age of 36, on August 5, 1962, a victim of a barbiturate overdose and a profound malaise stemming from a life where dazzling glamour constantly rubbed shoulders with the most intimate tragedies. “Marilyn lived to the very end a tragic scenario invented by Hollywood,” read an article in Vogue dated August 10, 1962. The daughter of a father who never acknowledged her and a mother suffering from severe mental illness, the granddaughter of a grandmother who tried to smother her when she was one year old, sexually abused from the age of eight, Norma Jean Baker experienced everything far too early: abandonment, violence, and even hunger. 

To escape her circumstances, she created the Marilyn persona, bleaching her hair an otherworldly blonde, offering her dream body to cameras and photographers without ever giving up on achieving success through her work and quenching her thirst for culture by reading James Joyce and admiring Rodin. Having been trapped for too long in the “ravishingly beautiful” cliché she loved to exaggerate in the comedies that contributed to her fame, she didn’t hesitate to found her own production company to stage The Prince and the Showgirl with Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier. 

Among the many tributes paid to her this anniversary year, beginning with the retrospective organized by the Cinémathèque, one must take a closer look at this beautiful book that Sébastien Cauchon conceived with none other than… Catherine Deneuve. In it, we discover the French actress as a lifelong fan, even going so far as to buy a sweater that once belonged to the American actress. A keen observer of the photographs in the book, she deciphers the unique outfits, marvels at her nose, which she finds charming and compares to a “little gnocchi,” and highlights her generosity and professionalism. 

While Monroe sometimes shunned the public’s overwhelming admiration, she never withheld her expressive gaze from the camera, a gaze that revealed both her fragility and her strength. Generosity as the ultimate elegance, a desire to please, despite everything and everyone. Or, as Deneuve summed it up in the caption of the photo published above: “Giving everything, even in white gloves.”

Marilyn chérie , by Catherine Deneuve and Sébastien Cauchon, Flammarion, 224 p., 39.90 euros.

About The Author

Johanna Liander

Johanna is senior preceptor in Romance Languages and Literatures in Harvard University. She teaches in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French.

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