Before Diana, there was another blonde whose potent blend of fragility and beauty stirred up pity and lust, and whose tragic death at age 36 cemented her status as a cultural obsession.
Half a century after her fatal overdose (or suicide, or murder – the conjectures and conspiracy theories abound), Marilyn Monroe’s star still burns bright and hot. Her name appears on the latest cover of American Vogue, which features an essay by Lena Dunham on the icon’s legacy. The ever-growing library of biographies includes volumes by avowed fan Gloria Steinem (who said the vulnerable and childlike Monroe represented everything women feared being) and Norman Mailer (his Marilyn was: “blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards”). More recently, the hummingbird-prolific novelist Joyce Carol Oates was moved to shade in the story. Her critically acclaimed 2000 novel based on Marilyn’s life is the source material for the writer and director Andrew Dominik’s psychological thriller Blonde, now available on Netflix after premiering at the Venice film festival.
