Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her 'dumb blonde' persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). By 1952 she had her first leading role in Don't Bother to Knock and 1953 brought a lead in Niagara, a melodramatic film noir that dwelt on her seductiveness. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950), drew attention. Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson J– August 5, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.Īfter spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946 with Twentieth Century-Fox. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances indelible emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so affecting. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny, and impossibly charming. Jotted in notebooks, typed on paper, or written on hotel letterhead, these texts reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts-notes to herself, letters, even poems-in Marilyn's own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos.

Now, for the first time, readers can meet the private Marilyn and understand her in a way we never have before.

Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety-and by the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her.īeyond the headlines-and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation-was a woman far more curious, searching, witty, and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Marilyn's image is so universal that we can't help but believe we know all there is to know of her. Fragments is an event-an unforgettable book that will redefine one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century and that, nearly fifty years after her death, will definitively reveal Marilyn Monroe's humanity.

Fragments book marilyn monroe