The Life of a Hollywood Icon

LA and London Museums Celebrate Marilyn Monroe

By Anthea Gerrie

It may be 100 years since she was born and more than half a century since her brief life expired, but Marilyn Monroe lives, forever young, in 2026 Los Angeles. Platinum blondes stride the Santa Monica Pier, ocean breezes rather than subway grates billowing their white pleated dresses high around their legs. Statuesque rival lookalikes strut their stuff on Wilshire Boulevard in shocking pink cocktail gowns designed to show off the diamonds given by gentlemen to the blondes they prefer, while others offset their peroxided locks with the kind of black evening frock Marilyn so presciently wore for her last photoshoot—an epitaph in the making.

Sexy, flirtatious, and funny but also outspoken, misunderstood, and vulnerable—every independent woman can see an aspect of herself in Marilyn, applauding the actress’s triumph over tragedy and victory over the men who sought (and failed) to control her career and image. So it’s not surprising America’s movie capital is celebrating the centenary of the world’s most famous film star with a handful of not-to-be-missed exhibitions in LA and across the pond in London.

“We’re looking at how she shaped her career quite actively,” says Sophia Serrano, curator of Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. More actively than might be imagined, because even when more of a rising star than a guaranteed box-office draw, the blonde bombshell circumnavigated the studio system that sought to stereotype so many other beauties they held under contract rather than freeing them to perform to their full potential. After capturing her on camera, the photographer Milton H. Greene empowered his subject way back in 1954. Greene persuaded her that she could control her destiny by forming her own production company to showcase the considerable range of her talents.

With its giant screens and unparalleled archives, the Academy Museum is better-placed than any other institution to tell Marilyn’s story through the movies she starred in. It’s a treat to see her stitched into that tight pink dress by William Travilla, singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” before the changing projection brings you so many other Marilyns: the object of every man’s sexual fantasy in The Seven Year Itch, the aspiring cabaret star in Bus Stop who provoked a Golden Globe nomination, and the ditzy girl band singer in Some Like It Hot, for which she won that Golden Globe, reminding the world what a natural comedienne she was as well as an accomplished singer and surprisingly serious actress. Her most famous movie costumes are on show at the museum, although what we really want to see—and can, on the spot—is Marilyn twirling in them to bring them to life. And while her own wardrobe of simple shapes and neutral shades seems a tad drab by comparison with her screen costumes, it’s fascinating to see her make-up palette laid out and learn how her look was a careful collaboration between herself and her trusted make-up artist, Allen “Whitey” Snyder, who fulfilled his promise to do her funeral make-up if she died before him. Like all of us who judge ourselves too harshly, even this beauty found fault with her features, working her whole life to disguise what a producer described as “an unattractive jawline.”

Her talent, not the main topic of conversation in this exhibition so much as her public look and private life, was not lost on that greatest of British actors, Sir Laurence Olivier, despite the troubled shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl, which she made for her own production company, inviting him to direct and co-star with her in 1957. He was generous about the experience, saying, “Marilyn was quite wonderful.”

But not all directors were so indulgent of a star who unraveled fast in the last few years of her life, including Billy Wilder, with whom she shared her greatest commercial and critical success in Some Like It Hot. A shocking exchange of never-before-displayed correspondence can be read between Wilder and Marilyn’s adored third husband, Arthur Miller, the former making a vicious attack on his star’s lateness and unprofessionalism. Miller robustly defended her with a reminder that his wife was pregnant and not supposed to work full days on a shoot that culminated in her miscarriage. Wilder caved in with an apology, but the pregnancy was lost the very day the film wrapped, and within a few short years, the marriage to the man Marilyn described as the first with whom she had ever been truly in love was lost, too. Yet the woman who was abandoned by her mother to the care of others at two weeks old and never sure who her father was remained surprisingly close to her father-in-law after her divorce from Miller.

“She brought him with her to the JFK birthday celebration gala where she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to the president, and she remained close to Miller’s children, too,” reveals Serrano, who also addresses the fact that Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn’s second husband, came back into her life during her final months and ultimately oversaw her funeral.

Serrano’s personal favorite item in the show actually predates the star’s career: her childhood collection of cigarette cards featuring movie stars she never imagined at age nine she would one day be seen with on the silver screen. “She was a huge movie fan, and had a card featuring Bette Davis; then later she’s in a movie with Bette Davis!” says Serrano of All About Eve, in which the still virtually unknown actress stole all her scenes but did not win any of the five Oscar acting nominations. More bittersweet was her appearance opposite Clark Gable, another star who made it into her card collection, in The Misfits, the troubled shoot in which her marriage to Miller, who wrote the script, experienced its excruciating death throes.

“He loved her but could not save her from herself,” says Peter Fetterman, whose portrait exhibition at his Santa Monica gallery, Marilyn Monroe: A Silent Life, offers the most immediate way to get up close and personal with Marilyn and gain insights from the gallerist into the photographers who became close friends and mentors throughout her career. Even more so than Greene—“He fell in love with her before becoming her business manager”—there was Sam Shaw, who captured the actress and the playwright throughout their courtship and honeymoon period. “He moved in the circle of New York intellectuals Marilyn aspired to join, which included her acting coaches Lee and Paula Strasberg, as well as Miller,” adds Fetterman. It was Sam whom Marilyn invited to take intimate pictures of herself and Miller at their country home early in their marriage, which are on show at London’s National Portrait Gallery as part of the exhibit Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait.

Honoring the end of her life, the Academy Museum does Marilyn proud by replaying her last interview, given the day before she died, on a loop. In it, she candidly expresses the dichotomies of her life: liking people, for example, while finding “the public” scary. But it is a shocking image at Fetterman’s gallery that endures in the mind: the naked, faded-out blonde, canceled in one bright stroke, a lipstick-colored cross on the contact sheet of her “Last Sitting” photoshoot for Vogue by Bert Stern. The mark was made by Marilyn herself to indicate rejection of the shot—one of her last acts of self-assertion in the right to control which images of herself she would allow to be published. In death, Marilyn was denied that. The picture was put out there after all. But given how maligned she was by so many, with conjecture about whether her premature death really was at her own hand—the inquest was inconclusive—she would likely have approved the title, Crucifix, and the conspiracy theory associated with it that Marilyn, the original Inconvenient Woman, was disappeared before she could cause any embarrassment to figures of high office or anyone else.

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Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon is at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles until February 28, 2007. Marilyn Monroe: A Silent Life is at the Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica until September 5, 2026. Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait runs at London’s National Portrait Gallery until September 6. Visit AcademyMuseum.org, PeterFetterman.com, or NPG.org.uk to learn more or plan a visit.