The goddess Aphrodite had no need for makeup. But it's hard to imagine Marilyn Monroe, the Venus of Hollywood, without loads of mascara, lipstick and peroxide in her hair. Makeup elevated her natural beauty to artificial perfection and glamour, making her one of the most beautiful symbols of consumer society. The consummate blonde bombshell would have turned 85 on June 1.
Monroe's far more artificial looking clones - from Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera to the wives of Russian oligarchs - are pale shadows of Monroe and lack her self-deprecating sensibility and her ability to win hearts. It takes more than glossy makeup and a breathy voice to be Marilyn Monroe; one needs a restless soul and a great deal of talent.
Behind the gloss
The glossy facade of this international sex symbol served to hide Monroe's deep loneliness and misery. The actress sacrificed her life to glamour, which gave her fame but took away everything else. "A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night," she once said. The fantasy girl of millions of men around the world never found happiness in marriage and remained childless. She joked that the fantasy of millions could never belong to one man.
She was scared of being alone, old age, of no longer being wanted or needed. Her relationships were brief, including her marriages to the likes of playwright Arthur Miller. Baseball player Joe DiMaggio was probably the only man who continued looking after the incredibly lonely and fatally infantile star even after their divorce.
"It's all make believe, isn't it?" she said of Hollywood. That's the way modern celebrities live too, suffering from narcissism and "glamour neurosis," tormenting themselves over their failure to live up to the ideal of glamour. They become addicted to beauty parlors, clothing stores, restaurants and fitness clubs. Gender psychologist Olga Makhovskaya says Russia has developed a cult of packaging: That's why the glamour business has become so profitable. People today only feel as well as they are dressed, Makhovskaya writes.
Monroe's smile was far from mysterious; in fact, it conveyed a rather blunt message: "Take me - I am easily approachable." Not every princess was so easy to approach. Grace Kelly, the muse of Alfred Hitchcock and the Princess of Monaco, seems like an ice queen compared to Monroe. Vivien Leigh and Greta Garbo were too refined and elegant, while blue-eyed Elizabeth Taylor, whose characters displayed an emotional range from tenderness to wrath, seemed to be challenging men: "Take me - if you dare."
Monroe's Cinderella-type story had a tragic ending. The beautiful princess, who had complicated relationships with two American "princes", the Kennedy brothers, died on August 5, 1962.
The goddess's exit has not sullied her myth. Her fans look away from the details of her death because it cast a gloomy shadow on her seemingly glamorous life. It is still unclear how or why she died. The public does not want to see the human side of this goddess of beauty.
Making an idol
"I always felt I was nobody and the only way for me to be somebody was to be... well, somebody else," she admitted. That's why she chose to try on other lives - to become an actress. The natural brunette became an artificial blonde.
The angelic beauty with her tragically angled brows long tried in vain to prove to the world that she was capable of playing complex roles, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky's characters. These roles are now often trusted to actresses whose emotional range or professional background is far sparser than Monroe's.
Directors chuckled at the devoted student of Stanislavsky's method as taught by Lee Strasberg. Lawrence Olivier, the genius who co-starred with Monroe in "The Prince and the Showgirl," was first amused and then annoyed by his partner's naive lectures on how he should act and what he should think about in the process.
Directors calmly weathered her outraged condemnations of lustful men and invited her again to play pretty blondes talking charming nonsense, the kind of women Oscar Wilde Wrote about: "If you want to know what a woman really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do - look at her, don't listen to her."
"A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing," Monroe said, but still she remained typecast as doll-like women. The frustrating struggle to break free from this role shattered her nerves; she could become hysterical. The widow of Clark Gable, who died in November 1960 during the work on "The Misfits" directed by John Huston, even accused his partner, Monroe, of having accelerated Gable's death. Monroe, as usual, ranted and made scenes during the shooting, driving Gable and other cast members crazy.
"The Misfits" was Gable's last movie; for Monroe, it was perhaps her most vibrant performance, apart from "All About Eve," the 1950 film by Joseph Mankiewicz.
The blonde's doom
In "All About Eve," the 24-year-old Monroe (until then Norma Jeane Baker) showcased her well-honed acting skills in her role as an unscrupulous and ambitious young actress. She had been in nine films by that time; after that, she acted in 21 more roles as an attractive young woman who eventually landed her man, often a millionaire.
She used a far richer palette while playing Eve; later, her characters sparkled with identical glamour and were hardly distinguishable from one another. They all loved diamonds, wore provocative outfits, sang in melodic voices and raised their brows with fake naivety - such as the lonely and vulnerable blonde singer, Sugar Kane, in Billy Wilder's "Some Like it Hot" (1959). That comedy actually mocked the very ideal of beauty created by Monroe - suffice it to recall the radiant Daphne played by Jack Lemmon.
Having cashed in on the notorious male attraction to blondes, Monroe helped turn her fellow blondes into a target of condescension and mockery. Blonde jokes are a perennially favorite. They raise men's self-esteem, proving their superiority over women, and partly console the less popular redheads and brunettes.
All of Monroe's roles played into the concept of the ideal woman formed in the 19th century. English playwright, novelist and short story writer Somerset Maugham said a woman had three responsibilities - to be pretty, to dress well and to never cross the man.
It is impossible to imagine an old Monroe playing middle-aged matrons or ageing duchesses. It is as difficult as trying to imagine Aphrodite as matronly Hera. Monroe created a cult of eternal youth and perfection - a cult that is still strong and omnipresent, to the detriment of other important values such as human relationships and individuality.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
