TV review: private investigators, co-stars and archive footage — will the Mystery of Marilyn Monroe ever be solved?
The Lost Tapes of Marilyn Monroe: a look at a complex and many-faceted person behind the icon
doesn't solve the mystery.
We still don’t know for sure if she died by accidental overdose, suicide, or murder.
But I don’t care.
It’s still a gripping story. Using material from phone interviews recorded in the 1980s, carried out by BBC reporter Anthony Summers, we hear from a wide array of people, most of whom claimed to be a close friend of Marilyn Monroe. These people range from her co-star in , Jane Russell, to shady private investigators and the family of Monroe’s psychiatrist, who seem to have adopted her, at least according to themselves.
You’re lured into Hollywood in the 1950s, full of awful men on casting couches. We hear about the physical and psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her two famous husbands.
But mainly, we got up close and uncomfortable with the Kennedys. Now might be a good time to tell your aunt to take down that photo of JFK on the mantle-piece. Because Jack and his brother Bobby just come across as entitled shits who would drop anyone who threatened their role as American 'royals'.
According to this show, Monroe had an affair with both of them, falling hard for Bobby. It seems like they were never more than two feet from a wiretap and hidden mic, as shady forces tried to get some dirt on the Kennedys. One private investigator claimed he heard a recording of JFK and Monroe having sex, but that it was destroyed. That would have been the sex-tape to end all sex-tapes.
But, again, her story is more interesting than that. Her voice is interspersed with the other intervie ws in the show.
Away from the cameras, she comes across as thoughtful, bright, ambitious, hard-working, and well able to navigate around Hollywood. There’s also an interesting take on loneliness, where she says at one point that we could all do with more aloneness.
That was never an option for the most famous movie star of the 20th century. Through it all, she seems desperate to have a proper loving relationship, perhaps to sooth her memories of a difficult childhood.
This show suggests that she wanted Bobby Kennedy more than anyone else. It also suggests that he saw her on the day she died, but concludes that he definitely didn’t kill her.
You can make up your own mind. Her life was much more interesting than her sad death at 36. The story-telling in is outstanding, using actors to lip-sync the interviews that Anthony Summers recorded, which helps to immerse you in her life.
She is still compelling, 60 years on. I stared at the screen any time she appeared — there was a magnetism that went beyond her coquettish, knowing looks to the camera.
Trying to figure out how she died is close to missing the point. This shows the price she paid for fame. And makes you wonder if she would turn it down, if she could do it all again.
