The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe: the title has nothing to do with past lives. Instead the author, Sarah Churchwell examines all the different ways that various authors of biographies of Marilyn have constructed or reconstructed her life from research, often dependent on each other's books. What really is true?
The mystery of who Marilyn really was and what her life - and death - were really like continues to intrigue many years past her death in 1962. Perhaps we are all projecting upon her and maybe she was the one who started telling stories on herself that were exaggerations or blatantly untrue as groomed by Hollywood and to enhance publicity.
What I as a genealogist want to look at here is how well the author(s) used resources that we would use as well to bring any ancestor back to life. In this book we see a copy of her birth certificate (and the uncertainty of her patriarchal lineage is sorted through). We also learn that someone unearthened her admission to the orphanage on September 13, 1935. (Just how many foster homes did she have?) Needless to say, a good researcher would find evidence of any and all rumored and known marriages. (As for Marilyn's medical records, I've learned that her shrink unethnically recorded her therapy, but that's another book.)
Then, to fight the rumors - or perhaps studio smearing - that Monroe was unable to act in the end, an addled mess, we find that the archives of Fox Studio, which shows that she had just negotiated the most lucrative contracts of her life for future films and that she was actually very in control of herself on the sets. THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Last but not least, Marilyn Monroe's FBI file was used for research... and we are linking to that here.
The book was published by Metropolitan Books - a Henry Holt Company - New York and is C 2004 by Sarah Churchwell
