28 Saturday Mar 2020
Mark Blum was born in Newark and raised in Maplewood, New Jersey. As a teenager, trips to Broadway shows taught him to love the theatre, though he never considered acting as a career. “I was raised in one of those basic middle-class Jewish families in the suburbs,” he told the New York Times, “and that just wasn’t something somebody thought about.” Continue reading
14 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Television, Theatre
≈ Comments Off on Arthur Miller: The Writer and the Man
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After The Fall, Arthur Miller, Arthur Miller - Writer, Carl Rollyson, Documentaries, Documentary, Elia Kazan, Inge Morath, Marilyn Monroe, Maureen Dowd, Rebecca Miller, The Misfits
Rebecca Miller, daughter of American playwright Arthur Miller and his third wife, Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath, is a novelist and filmmaker whose works include The Ballad of Jack and Rose and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. She has directed a stage revival of her father’s play, After the Fall, and her handful of acting credits include a minor role in a television adaptation of An American Clock. She also met her future husband, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, on the set of another Miller classic, The Crucible (1996.) Continue reading
31 Tuesday Dec 2019
Posted in Books, Film, Lana Del Rey, Music, Poetry, Politics, Television, Updates, Writing
≈ Comments Off on My Hopes and Fears for 2020
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1st September 1939, A Year in Books, A Year in Films and TV, A Year in Music, Art Decades, David Lynch, Dear Christine, Donna Tartt, ES Updates, Everlasting Star, Fan Phenomena, James Gray, Jeremy Corbyn, Lana Del Rey, Marilyn Monroe, Marion Cotillard, Poetry, Socialism, Soledad, The Goldfinch, The Immigrant, Twin Peaks, Ultraviolence, Video Games, W.H. Auden
As a new decade beckons, I’m deeply worried about the way our world seems to be heading. As W.H. Auden wrote on ‘September 1, 1939‘ (a poem deemed so prescient he tried to bury it …) Continue reading
23 Monday Dec 2019
Posted in Books, Film, Magazines, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Updates, Writing
≈ Comments Off on Marilyn’s ‘Mirror’ Review Goes to Print
My review of Amanda Konkle’s excellent book, Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe, is featured in the latest issue (#38) of UK fanzine Mad About Marilyn, alongside articles about Marilyn’s arduous promotional tour for the final Marx Brothers movie, Love Happy (1949); ‘A New Marilyn Comes Back’, first published by Movie Spotlight in 1956; and a profile of photographer Bruno Bernard, aka ‘Bernard of Hollywood’.
The delightful cover photo was taken at Richard Avedon‘s New York studio in July 1958, shortly before Marilyn flew to Los Angeles to shoot Some Like It Hot. If you’d like to subscribe to Mad About Marilyn, please email Emma: emmadowning@blueyonder.co.uk
19 Thursday Dec 2019
Posted in Books, Fiction, Film, History, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Politics, Profumo Affair
≈ Comments Off on 2019: A Year in Books
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10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World, A Suffragette in America, A Year in Books, Alexander Baron, Amanda Konkle, Benjamin Levy, Bette Howland, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Casey Cep, Cash Carraway, Colson Whitehead, Dolores, Edna O'Brien, Elif Shafak, Ernesto Quinonez, Eve Babitz, Furious Hours, Girl, Guzel Yakhina, Hallie Rubenhold, Harper Lee, I Used To Be Charming, Inland, Jack the Ripper, Janine Booth, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Kamala Markandaya, Kerry Hudson, Latin Writers, Lauren Aimee Curtis, Lowborn, Marilyn Monroe, Minnie Lansbury, Murray's Cabaret Club, Nicole Flattery, Nowhere Man, On Swift Horses, Profumo Affair, Sabrina & Corrina, Selina Todd, Shannon Pufahl, Shelagh Delaney, Short Stories, Show Them a Good Time, So We Live, Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Pankhurst, Taina, Tea Obreht, The Five, The Nickel Boys, Turkey, With Hope Farewell, Zuleikha
First published in 2015 as Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes and now available in English, Zuleikha tells the story of a Tatar woman whose brutish husband and vindictive mother-in-law treat her as a slave. This all changes around 1930 when along with other peasants and Leningrad intellectuals – a motley crew of ‘enemies of the state’ – Zuleikha is transported to a gulag in Siberia. Beside the age-old themes of tyranny and suffering, Zuleikha offers a surprisingly hopeful vision of how ordinary people can keep their wits and capacity for love, even in the direst circumstances. Continue reading
17 Tuesday Dec 2019
Posted in Books, Film, Non-Fiction, Television
≈ Comments Off on 2019: A Year In Film and TV
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3 Days in Quiberon, A Year in Films and TV, Albert Finney, Australia, Ava DuVernay, Black 47, Blindspotting, Derry Girls, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Hollywood Book Club, If Beale Street Could Talk, Ireland, James Baldwin, James L. Neibaur, Jean Harlow, Jennifer Kent, Joaquin Phoenix, Ken Loach, Letters From Hollywood, Lisa McGee, Marlon Brando, Martin Scorsese, Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, Patsy Kelly, Quentin Tarantino, Roddy Doyle, Romy Schneider, Rosie, Shane Meadows, Sharon Tate, Sorry We Missed You, Starring Red Wing!, Sue Lyon, Sunset, Susannah Grant, The Irishman, The Nightingale, The Sisters Brothers, The Virtues, Thelma Todd, Transit, Unbelievable, When They See Us, ZaSu Pitts
In 2019, we said goodbye to sixties icons Albert Finney and Sue Lyon, and remembered Sharon Tate… Continue reading
09 Monday Dec 2019
Posted in Film, Jeanne Eagels
≈ Comments Off on Two-Faced Woman: Joan Crawford and ‘Rain’
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1932, Imogen Sara Smith, Joan Crawford, Lewis Milestone, Pre-Code, Rain, Scarface, The Chiseler, Walter Huston
While it is generally agreed that no actress surpassed Jeanne Eagels’ performance as Sadie Thompson in Rain, many have tried. Among them was none other than Joan Crawford, in a 1932 talkie which was widely panned on release (and later, by Crawford herself.) While at first her Sadie may seem close to parody, a more striking portrayal soon emerges, as Imogen Sara Smith writes in ‘Two-Faced Woman’, an article for The Chiseler. Continue reading
15 Friday Nov 2019
Posted in Art and Photography, Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe
≈ Comments Off on Marilyn: A Life in Biographics
“When we can recognise an actor by a set of icons, we can also recognise how completely that actor and their work have entered our culture and our consciousness.” A snapper board, a ukulele, and a birthday cake; the imprint of red lipstick, a bottle of Chanel No. 5, and a white halter dress blowing in the wind above a subway grate. These are all visual signifiers of the ultimate Hollywood bombshell, Marilyn Monroe. Continue reading
04 Sunday Aug 2019
Posted in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction
≈ Comments Off on Some Kind Of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe
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All About Eve, Amanda Konkle, Audrey Hepburn, Billy Wilder, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Bus Stop, Clash By Night, Don't Bother To Knock, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, George Axelrod, How to Marry a Millionaire, Jack Cole, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Stanley, Let's Make Love, Love Happy, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Method Acting, Monkey Business, Niagara, O. Henry's Full House, Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe, Some Like It Hot, The Asphalt Jungle, The Misfits, The Prince And The Showgirl, The Seven Year Itch, We're Not Married
In 1954, Marilyn Monroe was rehearsing ‘Do It Again’ as part of her show for U.S. troops in Korea, when the officer in charge of her tour deemed the Gershwin standard “too suggestive,” and insisted she change the title to ‘Kiss Me Again.’ “People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of as a person,” she remarked in her memoir, My Story. “They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts.” Her comment inspired the title (and epigraph) for a new book, Some Kind of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe by Amanda Konkle, assistant professor of literature and film studies at Georgia Southern University. Continue reading
13 Thursday Jun 2019
Posted in Film, Magazines, Television, Updates, Writing
≈ Comments Off on Soledad 2: Twin Peaks, Joe D’Amato and More
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1989, Colette, David Lynch, Emily Jane Bryant, Heather Drain, Jeremy Richey, Joe D'Amato, John David Levy, Johnny Handsome, Les Bohem, Like A Prayer, Madonna, Marcelline Block, Michael A. Gonzales, Mickey Rourke, Peggy Lipton, Poetry, Robert Monell, Rory DeMaio, Soledad, Twin Peaks
The Italian actress Cinzia Monreale lies in her coffin on the cover of SOLEDAD Arts Journal‘s second volume, available now on Amazon for just $6 in the US, or £4.73 in the UK. It’s a still from Buio Omega (Beyond the Darkness), a 1979 horror flick, accompanied by a splendidly bizarre quote: “Darkness is not dark … time is not time … boys become dogs … girls become frogs …” Continue reading
