Joan Mellen: Marilyn’s First Female Filmographer

22 Monday Sep 2025

Posted by marina72 in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe

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Bus Stop, Clash By Night, Don't Bother To Knock, Feminism, Frank Powolny, Gene Kornman, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Germany, Gloria Steinem, Italy, Joan Mellen, John F. Kennedy, Larry McMurtry, Marilyn Monroe, Netherlands, Nickolas Muray, Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies, Ralph Schoenman, Richard Avedon, Sam Shaw, Sexism, Some Like It Hot, The Misfits, Turkey, Typecasting

Joan Mellen – the academic whose many books included the first female-authored (and feminist) critical biography of Marilyn Monroe, with a primary focus on her film career – has died aged 83. Continue reading →

Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

18 Thursday Jan 2024

Posted by marina72 in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Music, Non-Fiction

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42nd Street, A Ticket to Tomahawk, Alice Faye, Bernard F. Dick, Betty Grable, Broadway, Carousel, Darryl F. Zanuck, Down Boy, Fred Karger, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, George Cukor, How to Be Very Very Popular, How to Marry a Millionaire, Howard Hawks, Irving Berlin, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, June Haver, Ladies of the Chorus, Let's Make Love, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Musicals, Orson Welles, Richard Zanuck, River of No Return, Sheree North, Shirley Temple, Something's Got To Give, Sonja Henie, The Girl Can't Help It, The Jazz Singer, There's No Business Like Show Business, Twentieth Century Fox, Vivian Blaine, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter

Bernard F. Dick, a professor of English and communication at Fairleigh-Dickson University in New Jersey, has published many titles on the classical era of Hollywood film-making, covering a wide range of figures like producers Harry Cohn and Hal B. Wallis; directors Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder; actresses Claudette Colbert and Rosalind Russell; and the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. In his 2018 book, That Was Entertainment, Dick hailed the MGM musical as the genre’s ‘Gold Standard,’ reeling off a list of the studio’s all-time greats from The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain. Continue reading →

Peter Bogdanovich: From Marilyn’s Classmate to Hollywood Auteur

06 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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Actors Studio, Arthur Miller, Clash By Night, Clifford Odets, David Marshall, Dorothy Stratten, Fritz Lang, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Lee Strasberg, Life Among The Cannibals, Marilyn Monroe, Monkey Business, Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show

Peter Bogdanovich, the filmmaker, actor and historian, has died of natural causes at home in Los Angeles, aged 82. He was born in Kingston, New York in 1939, to immigrant parents who had recently fled Nazi-occupied Europe. Herma, his mother, was an Austrian-born Jew; while his father Borislav, a painter and pianist, was a Serbian Orthodox Christian. Peter attended classes at the Actors Studio as a teenager, and later studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory. Continue reading →

Marilyn Monroe: The Classic Performances

16 Sunday May 2021

Posted by marina72 in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Periodicals

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Arthur Miller, As Young As You Feel, Billy Wilder, Bus Stop, Chris Wade, Clash By Night, Don't Bother To Knock, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, John Huston, Ladies of the Chorus, Laurence Olivier, Love Happy, Love Nest, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe: The Classic Performances, Monkey Business, Niagara, River of No Return, Scenes Magazine, Some Like It Hot, Sophia Loren, The Asphalt Jungle, The Countess From Hong Kong, The Misfits, The Prince And The Showgirl, The Seven Year Itch

“My God, I think there have been more books on Marilyn Monroe than on World War II, and there’s a great similarity.”

So said Billy Wilder, who made two classic films with Monroe – and although the great director was prone to exaggerate, he had the battle scars to prove his point. Marilyn Monroe: The Classic Performances is the latest in an ongoing series from the prolific Chris Wade – a musician and filmmaker in his own right, with an admirable DIY ethic – whose past subjects include Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren and Madonna. Continue reading →

Some Kind Of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe

04 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by marina72 in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction

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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 →

Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tag Archives: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Joan Mellen: Marilyn’s First Female Filmographer

Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

Peter Bogdanovich: From Marilyn’s Classmate to Hollywood Auteur

Marilyn Monroe: The Classic Performances

Some Kind Of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe