Marilyn Revealed: The Ambitious Life of an American Icon

By Ted Schwarz

Book Overview

"What made Norma Jean special was the quality she discovered when, bored with being a teenage bride with a husband in the Merchant Marine during World War II, she took her first and most enduring lover-the camera." So posits author Ted Schwarz in the first comprehensive look at the life of Marilyn Monroe to appear in years, a biography that benefits from interviews with many of the actress's friends and acquaintances who have remained silent until now. Putting together the pieces of Marilyn's final days, spent in the company of Peter Lawford and his brother-in-law Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Schwarz also speculates on the causes of her death, which he describes as a "Hollywood version of natural causes."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1589793420
• ISBN13: 9781589793422
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Length: 696 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Detailed Account of Unknown Facts

Saw this in Barnes and Noble and wondered do we really need another Marilyn book. It was so thick it peaked my curiosity and so I bought it for entertainment value. Lots of previously unrevealed facts. Goes into detail. Puts Marilyn into historical connotation. Playwright Miller comes off as a jerk. Rightly so. Can't believe Mariln's hairline was given electrolysis, that was Rita Hayworth who had a beetle brow. Marilyn never had a beetle brow! She had a widow's peak. Reveals a lot of facts that were incorrect about her death and the people who supposedly knew her but didn't and made careers out of her death. The only troubling thing is how closely the Kennedy's were involved in her tragic end and how she was threatening to expose the brothers. The book kind of makes you wonder if they really didn't have a motive after all. Or if for them her death was a fortuitous accident. Entertaining. Many new facts.

STARTLINGLY DIFFERENT ASSESSMENT OF MARILYN!

Ted Schwarz's book will disturb, perhaps deeply, many a fan of Marilyn; his assessment of Monroe is much more harsh than most biographers; however, I think he is on to something! Ted portrays Marilyn as a highly motivated woman who wanted movie stardom or at least recognition more than anything else in the world & wasted not a single trick in doing whatever she could to reach her end. Early in the books first section you can tell that Schwartz did his homework very well; going so far as to research different versions of the same event in Marilyn's life coming to the most probable conclusion. In this vein he managed to tidy up her father's identity, childhood & all that tortured the young Norma Jean...or lack of many of the events she spoke of as happening to her, even how she conived & used people along the way to get what she wanted/where she wanted to be! Of course Studio publicity departments also get a lot of the credit for the many versions of her lifes trials & tribulations as Schwartz readily admits! While seemly handling Marilyn's story quite heavy handed or brusquely, there are instances when Ted gives her credit where that credit is due! But this book definitely has a more a factual tone of someone that has a complete indifference to Marilyn rather than someone who admired her or was "trying to understand the poor gal!" My problem with this book is that it seems slightly too familiar with Marilyn and all that went on in her life. Ted makes some assumptions that could be correct, but how does he know; was he there? At times he lapses into dialogue that was supposedly spoken, but was it? And although there is a perfectly adequate selected biography at the end; I was still left with some questions about where Mr. Schwarz garnered the detailed facts about certain times and/or events that he touches upon; was it general knowledge from his mind? All in all I think this book is an absolutely sincere endeavor and definitely yet another view about how Marilyn Monroe's mind might have worked and her life played out. But as I said...a lot of fans might hate this book and maybe me now!