The night of August 4, 1962, Norm Jean Mortenson or Marilyn Monroe, she died in the bedroom of her house in Brentwood, The Angels. Her housekeeper found her dead that morning for what seemed like a "probable suicide."
The disappearance of the great Hollywood star, with only 36 years, It also came just a decade after her career took off transformed into a character she herself came to loathe.
In the 60th anniversary of her death, in the Los Angeles Chinese Theater prepares the premiere of a new documentary (Dream Girl: The Making of Marilyn Monroe) and also an exhibition with costumes, scripts and personal belongings of two of the great private collectors of her legacy (Greg Schreiner and Scott Fortner). And, of course, a few weeks later the film we've been talking about for weeks will be released worldwide, Blonde, with Ana de Armas surprisingly turned into Marilyn to tell her great tragedy, above all, from images, in a story inspired by the homonymous novel by Joyce Carol Oates.
At Traveler, to celebrate this sad event we think of the places that remind us of Marilyn. The places she took us to in the handful of movies she left for history.
Marilyn before the falls.
NIAGARA AND NIAGARA FALLS
She was already the woman of the moment, but she had not yet been able to prove it on screen. They thought of her in the role of the femme fatale, the villain, and Marilyn, always eager to shake off the label of "pretty fool" so unfairly placed, accepted it with delight. They shot in the falls, in the Canadian zone, although without a trace of Canadian actors. “The falls and Miss Monroe deserve to be seen”, said the New York Times. And so much. Who stole the spotlight from whom?
On deck.
‘GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES’ AND LUXURY CRUISES
With this movie, her first big success, she consolidated that label that she hated so much. Beside Jane Russell they were two fortune hunters aboard a luxury cruise ship. The cruiser were sets from some Fox studio, of course.
Pure temptation.
'TEMPTATION LIVES ABOVE' AND 'HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE' IN NEW YORK
Both were also mainly shot in studios, although for Temptation lives above they did choose a natural location that you have surely been to visit, that same grid: Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street. Billy Wilder played the shy Marilyn and they called a lot of photographers and onlookers to shoot the legendary scene of the skirts, so many people were there that the material was useless and they had to repeat it in a studio in California.
How to marry a millionaire, where Marilyn shared the lead with Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable was also located in New York, but the actresses did not set foot on a street, the exteriors that are seen (a tour of the most touristic Manhattan), instead, they were images filmed ad hoc for the film, another great success of Monroe.
Y Let's Make Love, one of those films that Marilyn made almost by force, although on the set she ended up finding the complicity of an also lost in translation Yves Montand, it was also located in New York, off Broadway.
Landscapes and her.
‘LOST SOULS’ IN ALBERTA (CANADA)
both the manager Otto Preminger as Marilyn Monroe entered the production forced by the studio, but the two ended up finding a vehicle to show other talents despite all the difficulties they had during the filming that took place mainly in Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta, Canada. With some sequence shot, of course, in the original River of No Return (the film's original title), the Salmon River in Idaho.
Bus stop
BUS STOPS IN IDAHO AND ARIZONA
Marilyn had to go back to Idaho with this film, Bus Stop, which marked a turning point in his career due to its tone and because from that moment on he decided to set up his own production company to gain the control that had been denied him so much in his career and in his life (although later I'll get it halfway). Ironically, the woman she played is a woman who loses control of her life and ends up kidnapped, but in love, dragged on a bus from Arizona to Montana. Her character, by the way, dreamy Chérie was from the Ozarks, those mountains that we now also know by a series of the same name.
‘WITH SKIRTS AND LOCO’ AT THE CORONADO HOTEL (CALIFORNIA)
Probably the best known film in Marilyn's filmography. Masterpiece that she also made with difficulty with her advanced depression and addiction. Also the one we watch the most in terms of inspiring destiny: the first part of the film is a train ride from Chicago to Miami, a hilarious trip, hopefully a sleeper train like that. The rest of the film takes place in the Hotel del Coronado, a historical place, the second largest wooden building in the US, a hotel still standing that not only receives visitors because of Wilder's film, although most will arrive there thinking of the adventures of Josephine (Tony Curtis), Daphne (Jack Lemmon), and Sugar (Monroe).
Monroe and Montgomery Clift.
‘REBELLIOUS LIVES’ IN NEVADA
Written by Arthur Miller for her when they were still supposedly a happy marriage, it was filmed when they were in the process of separating, one more icing on the ticking time bomb that poor Marilyn was. It was the last movie that ended (also for Clark Gable that he would die only 12 days after filming it) and saves perhaps the best performance of her, the actress he always wanted to be. I know shot entirely in Nevada, where the history of this western takes place that was seen better as the years passed.
The pool.
THE SWIMMING POOL OF ‘SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE’
It wasn't just any pool. It was the last time Marilyn took a bath. Her last shooting of a movie that she couldn't finish. In it she bathed naked to the surprise of everyone who was on that set and also for those of us who, some time later, were able to see those images, sensual naturalness, Marilyn in its purest form. And it was not just any pool built on any set, it was a reconstruction of the swimming pool that director George Cukor had in his precious home.