The authors and screenwriters Joshua John Miller and Mark Fortin, who are both domestic and professional partners, are Zooming from the Chateau Marmont, under a Salvador Dalí print, and with their dark hair and thick beards it’s difficult to tell them apart. It’s even harder when listening to the recording of the interview, since they have similar timbers, finish each other’s thoughts and speak with equal passion about the subject of their gorgeous new book, The Marilyn Monroe Century. The visually stunning tome, timed to Marilyn’s centenary, recounts the friendship and creative collaboration between Josh’s grandfather Bruno Bernard, a Jewish German immigrant who became a legendary showbiz photographer, and Hollywood’s most iconic movie star. Many of Bernard’s photos from the book are featured in the Academy Museum’s new exhibition, Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon.
The tale begins on Sunset Boulevard in 1945, when Bernard — whom Fortin describes as “shockingly non-problematic” — uncharacteristically wolf-whistled an unknown, teenaged Norma Jeane Dougherty and invited her to his studio for a photo shoot. Bernard, whose photos of her would grace numerous magazine covers, became Norma Jeane’s confidant and something like a manager, a camera-toting Virgil guiding her into the Tinseltown inferno as she developed the persona that would become Marilyn Monroe.
The book draws heavily from Bernard’s detailed diary. But it’s also “haunted,” as Miller puts it, by the experience of Bernard’s daughter — Miller’s mother — Susan Bernard, a Playboy playmate and star of such B exploitation movies as Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill (1965) and The Killing Kind (1963). Miller and Fortin, who co-created the TV Queen of the South and co-wrote the slasher comedy Final Girls, see themselves as following the legacy of David Lynch by telling stories of “women in trouble” — which in Los Angeles leaves them with no shortage of source material. But while Marilyn, who died of an overdose in 1962 at age 36, has often been depicted as a tragic victim of Hollywood exploitation, Fortin and Miller’s book presents her in a more complicated light, as “an architect of her own image.” As the writers tell me in our interview, she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get there.
I’m sure you see the filmic potential of the story of your grandfather and Marilyn.
JOSHUA JOHN MILLER We just had a very substantial meeting with one of favorite producing companies at the studio that raised their hand for the book. And we all collectively agreed that the Norma Jeane story has never really been told. We all know the Marilyn story — that mythology is very clear and well known — but the early days of who Norma Jeane really was, and the sort of Faustian deals that had to happen for her to become Marilyn, no. And also what’s not known is how much agency she had in that journey.
MARK FORTIN Yeah, it’s tempting for some people to look at Marilyn’s story as either, Isn’t she fabulous? Or it’s Rob Zombie’s house of horrors. And with respect to both aspects, what sort of gets lost in the shuffle, is that she very much was an architect of her image, of that persona she created. She was extremely canny in terms of cameras, and she knew how to mold herself into something that was undeniable. None of it was accidental.
MILLER The movie is really going to focus on this romantic friendship between Marilyn and my grandfather. I think it’ll be good for actors because a lot of actors would be afraid of playing Marilyn Monroe, but we all determined internally: You don’t see “Marilyn” until the last frame of the movie.
She looked so different from Norma Jeane by that point. There have been reports that she’d had work done.
MILLER That is true, that’s all in the book. She did have work done, per the advice of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of William Morris. The quick short story of it is that she had been dropped for the third time by the studios, and this was Columbia, and she called him hysterical. She was always on the verge of something. And [Bruno] said, “Let’s go to the desert. I have an assignment in Palm Springs for Redbook, why don’t I take you out there and take some pictures and introduce you to some people at the Raquet Club?” And that weekend was very formative in terms of their friendship, but it was also the turning point, when they were sitting by the pool, and Johnny Hyde asked my grandfather….
FORTIN “Who’s this dame?”
MILLER And Johnny was very Machiavellian. He immediately assigned her to his nephew, Norman Brokaw, who, as we know, would go on to become the head of William Morris after Johnny died. Marilyn was Norman’s first client. He got her first contract at 20th, I think, for $125 a week with a $20 bump, and then he had her adjust the chin and the nose. Norman told my grandfather he didn’t want to take any more pictures of her in a two-piece bathing suit, it was too scandalous, only in a full bathing suit.
For stars at that time, a photographer was, as my grandfather said, their best friend, their mentor, their confidant, their stylist, their career manager, because so many of the pictures then were in magazines, and that’s what got the attention of 20th Century Fox for Marilyn’s first contract. All of it was curated by Bruno with Marilyn — Norma Jeane at the time. The outfits, the look, the makeup… Nowadays you have a team of what, 50 people running a particular celebrity or an Instagram star? This was all DIY, this was all in-house, and the photographers ran it. Bruno was also deeply invested, because how could you not be?
How much do you think Marilyn was a self-invention? How much was something imposed on her by all of these powerful men around her?
FORTIN It really wasn’t something that was imposed on her. By the time that she meets Johnny Hyde, she’s already lightened her hair. She has, with Bruno’s help, studied the walk of burlesque star Lili St. Cyr, who was dubbed Miss Swivel Hips, and so she’s altered the way she walks. She’s also started taking elocution lessons and started to develop the Marilyn Monroe voice that we know so well, which was not Norma Jeane’s natural voice, so she was absolutely the one who was in pole position for creating the persona that she ultimately became incredibly famous for.
MILLER It’s interesting, because you know, we look at these things through sort of a post-Me Too lens, right? And for example, the Academy has been using one of the pinup pictures my grandfather took of her in a two-piece bathing suit on this sort of green barrel, green barrel, and they posted it, and one person commented: “How can the Academy post a picture of Marilyn this two-piece bathing suit? This is exploitation of her all over again!” And of course the truth is, that two-piece bathing suit? Marilyn walked into my grandfather’s studio — this was maybe their fourth or fifth sitting — and she said, I got these new clothes, I have this new hair, I’m working on this new voice. I want you, Bernie, to take more sexy pictures of me.
FORTIN Bruno was the one who resisted. He was pushing to keep her as the sort of the girl next door, adorable secretary, schoolgirl, that kind of thing. And Marilyn was the one who was like, No, let’s step it up.
MILLER Were there wolves? Yes, it’s Hollywood, it’s the 40s, post–World War Two, the wolves are everywhere, and they still are. But two things could be true, I think she was inventing it, but I also think other people were imposing it in different ways as well. But what I think gets lost in the mythology — or if you look at that movie Blonde, it only paints her as a victim. It’s trying to tell a story about how she was exploited, but in the end, the absence of her having any agency in her life, or of talking about all the incredible, pioneering things she did, are never even addressed in this movie, so as a result it just feels like a victim narrative.
FORTIN As beautifully made as it is.
MILLER It felt like trauma porn, honestly.
FORTIN And focusing on Marilyn and a bathing suit, and calling that exploitation sort of diverts the conversation away from where she actually was exploited. She was exploited by her own studio, Fox. She was exploited by [20th Century Fox studio head] Darryl Zanuck. [Columbia Pictures chief] Harry Cohn, apparently, allegedly, made a pass at her, and her contract at Columbia got thrown out when she resisted the casting couch.
MILLER And then 20th really tortured her, torture at the because she broke out of the 20th contract and spoke out about it, and then when she did a couple movies with her own production company, which was totally vanguard at that time in New York, she then went back to 20th to go make the last movie [the unfinished Something’s Got to Give]. They really tortured her, and they wanted to get back at her for having spoken out against the studio, for having broken her contract, and then renegotiated for a higher fee.
Below, Miller and Fortin select three of their favorite images from the book:
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