Liz Garbus – Bitch Flicks

‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’: A High Priestess Speaks of Rebellion

Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

What Happpened, Miss Simone Netflix One Sheet — *What Happpened, Miss Simone* Netflix One Sheet

“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”

–Nina Simone

Director Liz Garbus could’ve stopped the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? six minutes into its run time. Nina Simone steps onstage after a lengthy absence from show business. She takes a bow and then stops cold, stares at the audience for what seems like an eternity. Her eyes take in the scene but from my viewpoint, it looks like she is seeing beyond the crowd gathered before her. It’s like she can see the future, what’s coming up for Black people around the bend of time.

Her face is filled with long simmering rage, pain, insolent dark beauty, and unchecked defiance. Here stands an artist struggling to create timely, relevant, serious Black art in front of an overwhelmingly white audience outside of America. She remembers the feeling of isolation and hatred against her for being Black. Nose too big. Lips too full. Skin too dark. Daring to dream of becoming the first Black classical pianist. Denied entry into the Curtis Institute of Music after a short stint at Julliard. Then she sits down. Speaks a few words, and then starts her performance.

"I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I'Ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces" — “I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I’ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces”

This small moment, a few seconds really, told me all I needed to know. The documentary could’ve ended right there for me, the look on Simone’s face was that forceful and telling. I have seen that look before. In the eyes of my grandfather when I was little, in the eyes of aunts and uncles and older friends who have been through some shit in America. It’s the eyes of a weary soldier who knows the battle will be long and not finished soon enough.

What makes this documentary extraordinary is that we get to hear and see Nina Simone talk about her life herself. In her own words at the exact times she says them. This is not a typical documentary film where the artist is reflecting back, perhaps shading the truth a little because of time. Garbus uses film footage of Nina speaking, and we are allowed to be time travelers, visiting exact moments in Simone’s life as they are happening. Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

Nina Simone performing "Mississippi Goddam" in Selma during the historic March — Nina Simone performing “Mississippi Goddam” in Selma during the historic march.

What I enjoy about the documentary is that Nina is bold and Black with no filters, exactly as I imagined her to be. I started listening to her music with serious intent while in college after presenting a paper on protest music in a History for Teachers class. I wrote of folk singers, like Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Odetta, et al, moved into James Brown’s seminal “Say it Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” and introduced my professor and classmates to Simone’s “Missississippi Goddam.” No one had heard of the song or her. I dug into music archives, listening, learning, trying to imagine being a singer of righteous indignation in a world that only wanted Diana Ross and the Supremes type pop music from Black women. I wondered what Nina Simone thought about her work going against the musical dictates of her time. In this documentary, Simone lays it out there for me. And it’s a heartbreaking motherfucker to watch. I had to pause several times in my viewing to catch my breath and process Simone’s words. A reporter interviews Simone late in her life and Nina laments that all she wanted to be was that cherished classical pianist, and tears swell up in her eyes. I had to stop and cry for her too.

The High Priestess adorning preparing for a show. — The High Priestess adorning hersel for a show.

What Happened, Miss Simone filled me with a lot of anger. I’m angry a lot these days I confess. Angry at the overt racism she lived through, angry at the depression and undiagnosed bipolar disorder she suffered through for so long, and angry at her husband/manager Andrew Stroud. Angry that American racial baggage is still with us as I write these words. The footage of Stroud talking about his life with Nina Simone is a goldmine to have, because we hear directly from the horse’s mouth his adverse reaction to her radicalization during the Civil Rights Movement. In one journal entry Simone wrote:

“I don’t mind going without food or sleep as long as I am doing something worthwhile to me such as this.”

As for her husband’s response to her involvement with the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement, she wrote:

“Andrew was noticeably cold and very removed from the whole affair.”

"Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.' Nina on the Civil Rights Movement. — “Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.” Nina on the Civil Rights Movement.

While Simone stands on stage shaping her music to reflect the times she lives in, hoping to inspire and encourage young people to recognize they were young, gifted, and Black, in a world that wanted to crush the life out of them, Stroud sits on film stating with disdain, “She wanted to align herself with the extreme terrorist militants who were influencing her.”

Here was a Black man who was calling young Black radicals fighting oppression terrorists. Black People. In America. Getting their asses bombed, beaten, and bloodied in the streets of a country they built. Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?

No wonder Nina Simone left Andrew Stroud.

It wasn’t enough that he was beating her, working her to death, and dominating her life. He was disrespecting the work that she found meaningful which was making music for her people. I found it condescending and – surprise- sexist, that he believed Simone had no agency of her own to think for herself. He really believed that others outside of her own thinking mind were influencing her decision to write and sing radical Black music, to take up the cause of the Black Panthers and to question the utility of non-violence in the face of violent white Americans. Theirs was a complicated, volatile relationship, and I could only feel deep sorrow for their daughter Lisa Simone Kelley who was caught in between them. Lisa discusses how she later suffered physical abuse at the hands of her own mother after her parents broke up. (Side note: One of my favorite performances of Simone’s “Four Women” includes Lisa Simone Kelly. Watch it here.)

Nina Simone's only child, Lisa Simone Kelly. — Nina Simone’s only child, singer Lisa Simone Kelly. She is also an executive producer of the documentary.

Simone explains that she was responsible for the livelihood of 19 people who worked for her. The pressure, stress, and physical/mental fatigue made her suicidal. What happens when your soul can’t do what it needs to do? When the thing that you love doing, slowly turns into the thing that you dread and eventually hate? It eats at you and often your mind turns on itself. Another journal entry during this crisis has Simone lamenting, “They don’t know that I’m dead and my ghost is holding on.”

The documentary showcases the highs and many lows, and it gives the viewer an opportunity to glimpse the genius Black woman that Simone was. Her music catalogue and this documentary are like a grimoire for those of us who need to reach into it to conjure up spells of protection and invocations of remembrance. I had to watch it four times to revel in her magic.

Nina free in Liberia — Simone in Liberia, Africa. The only time she felt free in her life according to Simone in the documentary.

Near the end of the documentary Nina reflects on how singing political songs hurt her career.

“There is no reason to sing those songs. Nothing is happening,” she says. She is so wrong. We need her songs now more than ever. We need that bold, bruising canon of radical Black music. We are calling on old Black Gods during this Black Lives Matter Movement (and the racist, terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina that ended nine lives, including that of a State Senator), and this High Priestess of Soul can show us the way.

I hear her influence in the recent works of D’Angelo (the Black Messiah album) and Kendrick Lamar (“Alright”) who are writing protest music for this generation. As writer/cultural critic Stanley Crouch says in the film, Nina Simone is the Patron Saint of the Rebellion. All praises due. The struggle continues. This documentary tells us that. Call upon her name. Nina. Simone.

Amen.

High Priestess of Soul and The Patron Saint of the Rebellion.

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Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative fiction short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She divides her time between California and Italy. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja. Follow at your own risk.

“24/7” Music: ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ and ‘Eden’

Anyone could make a pretty good video montage of Nina Simone in popular culture: first that iconic Chanel commercial featuring Simone’s version of “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” then an early pre-Wallace-and-Gromit Aardman Studios short in which a sexy, clay-mation cat chanteuse sings the same song (in Simone’s voice), and finally Julie Delpy near the very end of Before Sunset imitating Simone’s stage patter (white people, please, let’s not mimic Black people ever) for Ethan Hawke. But what these clips lack is Simone’s face, when her dark skin, wide nose, and full lips differentiated her from other Black women who were popular stars in the mid-twentieth century, like Diahann Carroll and Lena Horne, and even the Black women we see in movies and TV today. A recent bio-pic of Simone, which never had a real release in theaters, featured lighter-skinned star Zoe Saldana wearing dark makeup and a fake nose to play one of the first Black woman entertainers who performed with her hair natural and long earrings that brushed her shoulders in African-inspired dresses and head wraps.

Liz Garbus’s new documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? (which opens in New York this week and will be streaming on Netflix starting this Friday, June 26) has glorious closeups of Simone’s face throughout. The film commences with a clip of a live performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival when, after a long glare at the audience, she says, “We’ll start from the beginning.”

Simone grew up poor in the Jim Crow South, but because her mother was a preacher, played the piano from a young age. At a church concert a couple of white women recognized Simone’s talent and she began to train as a classical pianist with the town’s white instructor. Simone practiced seven or eight hours every day, so even as a child was isolated from her peers, both Black and white. Segregation kept her from fulfilling her early dream; although she was able to attend Julliard (thanks to fundraising efforts in her hometown) she failed her audition for The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She later learned she was turned down because she was Black (a side note: classical auditions are now conducted with the musician hidden from view, a change that has been key in helping modern orchestras get closer to gender parity).

Simone adopted the pseudonym we know her by (she was born Eunice Waymon) taking “Nina” from a boyfriend’s nickname for her and “Simone” from the French actress Simone Signoret to perform the “devil’s music” in bars to support herself and her family. She had never sung before but was told at her first job she had to. Incorporating virtuoso piano technique with the greatest jazz improvisers’ instincts (Simone says she would sometimes change key in the middle of a song–her longtime guitarist Al Schackman was one of the few musicians who could keep up with her) along with a beautiful, distinctive voice and a deep, emotional connection to whatever she sang, she soon became a star. She performed blues, pop, and jazz songs as well as show tunes, remaking each of them in her own style. As critic Stanley Crouch says during the film, no one would ever mistake her work for that of anyone else.

SimoneMakeup — Nina Simone prepares for a concert

She married a New York vice cop, Andrew Stroud, who became her manager (which rarely turns out well). He physically and sexually abused her and pushed her to perform and tour more, even as she, like a lot of musicians who while away much of their childhood practicing, began to question if she really wanted a music career.

The civil rights movement gave her renewed purpose: she cultivated friendships with other Black artists, like Langston Hughes (who co-wrote with her “Backlash Blues”) and Lorraine Hansberry (the godmother of Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, who is interviewed extensively in the film). Simone also performed for the marchers with Martin Luther King at Selma and wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in response to the killing of Medgar Edgers and the four little girls in Alabama. She was close to Malcolm X’s wife and children and lived a short distance from them in Mount Vernon, New York, where her daughter became an honorary member of their family.

Like many others from that era she became disillusioned in the wake of the assassinations of civil rights leaders, and when the revolution so many spoke of and believed in during the 1960s never came. Manifesting symptoms of the bipolar disorder doctors would eventually diagnose (her mental illness was probably exacerbated by the beatings) she abandoned her marriage–and, for a time, her daughter–and never lived in the United States again.

The film has many great performance clips of Simone (including a moment in Montreux where she goes from palpable anger to laughter as an audience member spontaneously shouts out to her). I wish the film included even more of Simone’s music. The interviews are all first-rate and thorough, even as the interviewees, like Stroud and Schackman, seem to have opposing viewpoints. Lisa Simone Kelly is remarkably even-tempered in her remembrances of her mother as a genius and a star, but also as the person who physically and emotionally abused her. She says, “People think that when she came out onstage she became Nina Simone. My mother was Nina Simone 24/7 and that’s where it became a problem.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOQXZxriKY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

In theory I’m the ideal audience member to see Eden, Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film, a fictionalized bio of her brother Sven Hansen-Løve (he co-wrote the script) about his days as a well-known DJ in Paris. Although I’ve never been to Paris, I spent enough time in US clubs in the 1990s that when I recognized a familiar song quietly humming in the background of an early scene, I started swaying in my seat in anticipation of hearing the song at full volume and becoming enveloped in a mass of lights and dancing bodies. But those few faint notes were all the film included; the characters end up walking away from the music in that scene, a metaphor for the film itself.

EdenCouple — A frustrated couple in a frustrating film

We all want to do the best we can for our families (well, most of us do) but Hansen-Løve seems to have zero affinity for the music, fashion, atmosphere, and dancing of the club scene in the ’90s and 2000s. Her idea of a great club scene is one in which the main character says of Daft Punk, “They’re killing it,” instead of letting us see, hear, and come to that conclusion ourselves. She should have steered her brother to a different director.

Additionally, the women in the life of the main character, who never gives us any reason to care about him, Paul (Félix de Givry) are, with one exception, nothing more than the interchangeable ciphers we’ve seen in every movie about straight, white, male protagonists. Each woman is ready to drop everything, either to accompany Paul on his US tour or clean up after him when he vomits. Greta Gerwig, in an English-speaking role, is the only one allowed ambitions of her own and she is on screen far too briefly.

Somewhere in this film of club scenes that are often tedious and indistinguishable from each other (Eden is 131 minutes long, but you’ll swear it lasts the same couple of decades the film covers) is the bare bones of a decent story: what it’s like to outlive the fashionability of one’s talents and tastes. After a disastrous gig, a drunk and drugged-out Paul is carried home from the club by his friends and as they pass an older woman on the staircase she says something about, “The youth of today.”

He retorts, “I’m 34!” That’s a pretty good line, but it’s the only one in this morass of a film.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l1T9xs-o0o” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Lauryn Hill Performs Signature Nina Simone Numbers at New York Premiere of ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ at the Apollo

Earlier on the red carpet, I mentioned to Garbus that Nina Simone is having a moment. Gina Prince-Bythewood has her protagonist sing “Blackbird” in ‘Beyond the Lights’ and Simone’s music seems to be getting a new audience as well. Garbus said, “It’s very interesting. You know I can’t explain that. I was in Starbucks this morning for half an hour and what was playing was Nina Simone. I guess we just needed her.”

S. Epatha Merkerson, Atallah Shabazz, Liz Garbus

This guest post by Paula Schwartz previously appeared at Showbiz 411 and is cross-posted with permission.

Lauryn Hill’s rousing performance following the screening of What Happened, Miss Simone? Monday evening at the Apollo Theater turned into a celebration and tribute to the genius and artistry of the musician/activist Nina Simone. The sensational evening was presented by Netflix and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. (The documentary will air on Netflix on Friday, June 26.)

Hill, who first performed at the Apollo at age 13 where she was booed for singing “Who’s Lovin’ You” off key, got a very different reception last night.

Dressed in a white halter-top and flared pants, Hill looked terrific, and even channeled the legendary singer; her outfit resembled an outfit Simone wore in a legendary performance featured in the documentary directed by Oscar nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola, 1998).

Hill’s voice was raspy from some ailment mentioned by producer Jayson Jackson in his introduction before her set, but that that only made her voice sound even more like Simone’s baritone. In her nearly 50-minute set, Hill danced and swayed and sang signature Simone numbers.

The former Fugees singer opened with a moving rendition of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” and followed up with a dynamic version of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” She sang backed up by a full orchestra that included lush sounds of string instruments.

There were problems with the sound mix and some failed starts and stops, but Hill is a perfectionist and demanding bandleader and it all finally came together. For her next number she enthused, “We goin’ try to rap with this,” and Hill performed a new rap song inspired by Simone’s music.

Afterward she introduced the terrific Jazmine Sullivan with, “She can sing for the both of us tonight,” and added, “Watch this!”

Sullivan launched into Randy Newman’s 1977 song “Baltimore,” a tune Simone memorialized, which with Baltimore’s current problems could have been written today: “Man, it’s hard just to live. Oh, Baltimore. Man, it’s hard just to live, just to live.”

The song is included in a Simone tribute album timed to be released in conjunction with the documentary, which includes artists Hill, Common, Usher, Mary J. Blige, and Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, a singer who also appears in the documentary and provides some of the film’s most poignant moments and insights into her mother’s life and career.

After Sullivan’s performance, Hill returned and ended on an even higher note, with her take of “African Mailman.” The long instrumental showcased the band with solos by the drummer, violinist, and backup singer. But the program was all about Lauryn Hill and her channeling of Simone, and despite the crowd’s stomping and cheering as the show ended its nearly hour-long set, there was no encore.

As suggested by the title, What Happened, Miss Simone? the documentary portrays a musical genius, but also a troubled artist who often fell on hard times. Driven by her art and social activism, and constrained by racism and her own inner demons – Simone was diagnosed late in life with bipolar disorder – she was also controlled by an abusive husband/manager Andrew Stroud, a former cop. He furthered her career but also beat her. There are archival segments of the couple together and present-day interviews with Stroud, who did not attend the premiere. (Simone’s daughter, who is promoting her new album, also did not attend.)

Notable celebrities at the premiere included grandchildren and friends of Simone, along with her longtime musicians Al Schackman, Lisle Atkinson and Leopoldo Fleming. Atkinson, a bass player who played with Simone for five years, told me her legendary tantrums and difficulty as a performer were exaggerated and he never had a bad moment on stage with her. He told me he believed she would want to be remembered for her music.

Schackman, a guitarist with perfect pitch, performed with Simone throughout her career and his astute comments and obvious love and esteem for Simone provide for some of the film’s most perceptive and informative moments.

In her introduction from the stage to the film, Garbus thanked Netflix and all the contributors to the documentary and related a story from Simone’s memoir. “Friends say I might have trouble with the crowd here because the Apollo is well known for giving artists a rough time,” read Garbus from Simone’s notes. “And I’m well known for the same to audiences.” The audience laughed. “So the two of us getting together was looked at as a kind of championship boxing match with the Apollo as the champ and me as the contender. In the end we fought to a draw.”

From the time she was a girl of 3, Nina Simone aspired to be the first Black classical pianist. “That was all that was on my mind,” she said in an interview in the doc, where in archival footage she famously said of her political activism that often got her into hot water, “I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”

Earlier on the red carpet, I mentioned to Garbus that Nina Simone is having a moment. Gina Prince-Bythewood has her protagonist sing “Blackbird” in Beyond the Lights and Simone’s music seems to be getting a new audience as well. Garbus said, “It’s very interesting. You know I can’t explain that. I was in Starbucks this morning for half an hour and what was playing was Nina Simone. I guess we just needed her.”

Speaking of her inspiration for the doc, Garbus said, “I’m a conduit to bringing her to audiences that didn’t know her before or giving her audience who loved her a little more of her. That’s a wonderful position to be in.”

The director noted that Simone is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century who had 15 ways of singing the same song. When she undertook the project, Garbus told me she didn’t know Simone’s personal life: “But of course as soon as I started to peel away layers of that I was even more committed and desirous of bringing her story to the screen.”

As for what Garbus hopes audiences take away from seeing the film, she told me on the red carpet, “I want them to listen to her music all over again and for that listener it will be a delicious experience because you’re going to know what this woman went through and what she was bringing to that music.”

Celebrities who attended the premiere included John Leguizamo, Sandra Bernhard, S. Epatha Merkerson, Usher, Gina Belafonte, Ilyasah Shabazz, and D.A. Pennebaker.

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

Sex Symbol and Trail-Blazer: A Review of ‘Love, Marilyn’

Monroe, in fact, enjoyed expressing herself sexually. To see her as an eternal victim is to rob her of her own sexuality. Monroe embraced her sexual subjectivity; she did not want to be a sexual object. In fact, she told Meryman, “I just hate to be a thing.” Of course, female sexuality is simultaneously denied, contained, controlled and exploited in a misogynistic society. The star was, at once, punished for her sexuality and reduced to being a sexual object. I think, with Monroe, we should not reproduce those objectifying, effectively dehumanizing tendencies in our understanding of her sexuality.

Written by Rachael Johnson

Directed by Liz Garbus, Love, Marilyn is a 2012 documentary about the most iconic female American star of the twentieth century, Marilyn Monroe. The film mixes archival footage, photographs and movie clips with contemporary commentary by biographers and historians as well as old interviews with those who knew the actress. It also features dramatic readings by present-day actors of Monroe’s own words and quotes by deceased writers and directors. In her opening, Garbus anticipates the accusation of over-saturation by acknowledging that the star has, in truth, been one of the most scrutinized figures in pop culture. We are told that there have been over a thousand books written about her. Love, Marilyn, though, hopes to be fresh and different as one of its sources is a trove of recently discovered writing by the star herself. Garbus promises, “Marilyn’s own voice adds new layers to the mystery.”

True to its tagline–“One Icon, Many Voices”–Love, Marilyn employs a number of actresses of all ages to read Monroe’s reflections. They include the likes of Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Lili Taylor, Lindsay Lohan, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Viola Davis. I understand the point. While attempting to shine a light on the many parts of Monroe, the director is, also, it seems, trying to suggest a kind of ancestral kinship between the women. This is quite a moving idea when you think about it. Unfortunately, what is a potentially interesting, affecting device rapidly becomes a really irritating gimmick. Far too many actresses seem to hover across the screen to give readings and I am very sorry to say that the vast majority of the performances are just too self-conscious and overstated. Of course, the actors who give voice to Monroe’s deceased male biographers and the men who knew her fare no better with this approach. The dramatic readings are simply distracting. Only Viola Davis and Adrien Brody (as Truman Capote) give half-decent deliveries. It is a shame because there are some fine talents involved.

It is even more disappointing because the artificial readings quite often obscure the absorbing and constructive elements of the documentary. Love, Marilyn features interesting commentary by Monroe biographers and film historians in addition to fascinating footage of old television interviews with the actress. Most importantly, it acknowledges her heartbreaking victimization while also recognizing her achievements and great cultural significance. Monroe should not be dismissed as a passive sex object or “bimbo.” When she was focused and healthy, she was a dynamic, engaged subject as both an actor and woman. Although it naturally addresses the darkness–the exploitation, pills, mental illness and fatal overdose–the documentary crucially highlights her creativity and ambitious, competitive nature. From the very start, it makes it clear that the young Marilyn was extremely industrious and entirely dedicated to improving her acting skills. She also looked after her interests and demonstrated uncommon initiative. Tired of being underappreciated and underpaid by the studio, and fed up with lack of creative control and worn-out roles, she walked out of her contract at Twentieth Century Fox in 1954 and escaped to New York.

The documentary underscores that Monroe’s break for independence was exceptional for a Hollywood star. Her personal revolt paid off when the studio eventually asked her to return. She got what she wanted–director approval included. Love, Marilyn also relates that Monroe launched her own production company with photographer Milton Greene, Marilyn Monroe Productions, when she went out on her own. This is an invaluable reminder for audiences. There are still too many film lovers who are unaware of this extraordinary, inspiring fact.

In New York, Monroe also began to concentrate on her craft. She took classes at the Actors Studio and befriended the legendary Lee Strasberg. In an old interview with the acting teacher, he praises Marilyn’s gifts: “She was one of the two or three most sensitive and talented people I’ve seen in my life.” Love, Marilyn points out her professional insecurities but also exhibits her gifts. There is a great clip shown of Monroe and Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). As biographer Donald Spotto remarks, the actress simply out-performs her illustrious co-star on the big screen.

A Philippe Halsman 1952 shot of Monroe featured in the documentary

Love, Marilyn also, importantly, demolishes long-held beliefs that the sex symbol Monroe was solely manufactured by the studio. Ellen Burstyn, a former Actors Studio member, observes, “Marilyn created that wonderful character, Marilyn Monroe.” Vividly illustrating how she invented her own walk, she argues that it was the actress herself who fashioned her very own star persona. Love, Marilyn also acknowledges Monroe’s love of literature as well as her respect for ideas and intellectuals. It was during this period that she met her future husband, playwright Arthur Miller. The documentary also importantly points out that Monroe was ahead of her time regarding the question of marriage and career. Fascinating interviews with the actress shortly after her marriage to Miller reveal that she had absolutely no intention of giving up her career or slowing down. It is said that this was, in fact, one of the main reasons her marriage to the patriarchal ex-baseball player, Joe DiMaggio broke down. Monroe’s attitudes are all the more unusual in what is generally acknowledged as a backward decade for American women.

Uma Thurman performing Monroe's words — Uma Thurman performing Monroe’s words

Although it recognizes her enlightened attitudes and interest in ideas, Love, Marilyn does not, unfortunately, address Monroe’s specific ideological beliefs. The actress was, it seems, to the left of the political spectrum and impressively forward-thinking. It shows that she supported Arthur Miller when he was forced to testify before the chillingly repressive McCarthy hearings that he had no Communist affiliations but it does not explore her remarkable connections with left-wing activists, respect for working people and progressive sympathies. She actively championed the career of Ella Fitzgerald and advocated interracial harmony. As the great singer herself said, “She was an unusual woman, a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.” This is a missed opportunity by the filmmaker. Monroe’s principles constitute a powerful rebuke to those who seek to simplify her as a sex object. Her support for Fitzgerald also shows that this so-called “man’s woman” was capable of sisterly solidarity.

Lili Taylor performing Monroe's words — Lili Taylor performing Monroe’s words

There is, of course, a darker side to Monroe’s life. Tragically, there is little doubt that she suffered sexual exploitation in Hollywood. She was also objectified on the screen. Love, Marilyn explains that this was particularly the case in the early part of her career. Head of Twentieth Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck, it is said, hated Monroe and gave her a string of offensive, one-dimensional sex object roles. This was, of course, the main reason why she quit Fox. The documentary also suggests that Monroe was both a victim of the casting couch and a cog in the Hollywood machine. Monroe was a casualty of the deeply conservative patriarchal time and place that was America in the ’50s.

This understanding should not, nevertheless, obscure the fact that there was another Marilyn who somehow survived her hellish youth to love and desire others. As a 1962 Life Magazine interview with Richard Meryman reveals, Monroe was not ashamed of her sexuality: “We are all sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift” (Life Magazine, Aug. 17, 1962). Monroe, in fact, enjoyed expressing herself sexually. To see her as an eternal victim is to rob her of her own sexuality. Monroe embraced her sexual subjectivity; she did not want to be a sexual object. In fact, she told Meryman, “I just hate to be a thing.” Of course, female sexuality is simultaneously denied, contained, controlled and exploited in a misogynistic society. The star was, at once, punished for her sexuality and reduced to being a sexual object. I think, with Monroe, we should not reproduce those objectifying, effectively dehumanizing tendencies in our understanding of her sexuality.

Love, Marilyn rightly shows that the actress was not frightened of expressing–and displaying–herself sexually. When it was discovered in 1952 that Monroe did a nude calendar a few years earlier, the scandal threatened to destroy her career. But the star was defiant: “I will not be punished for it, or not be loved, or be afraid of my genitals being exposed, known and seen. So what?” Thankfully for the star, the scandal catapulted her to fame. Film historian Thomas Schatz boldly proposes that Monroe was a sexual pioneer: “The world was ready for that. Obviously, the sexual mores are changing and she is at the vanguard of that. She’s anticipating a sexual revolution that many people associate with Betty Friedan, etc, a decade later, that would not have happened without Marilyn Monroe.” There is an amusing anecdote related by Amy Greene, Monroe’s friend and wife of Milton Greene, that reveals the sex symbol as a sexual subject. When questioned about the unlikely pairing between the actress and DiMaggio, Monroe simply responded, “He’s terrific in bed.” The sexual politics surrounding the star could, nevertheless, have been explored in greater depth. It would be have been interesting to examine both male and female attitudes towards Monroe as well as her attitudes towards her own sex.

A 1962 Arnold Newman photo of Monroe with the poet Carl Sandburg featured in the documentary

Love, Marilyn does not shy away from the depressing aspects of Monroe’s life and rightly recognizes that she was victimized personally and professionally. It examines her ultimately troubled marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, addiction to pills, miscarriages and ill health, as well as her final disputes with the studio. It contends that both husbands ill-treated her: DiMaggio was violently possessive while Miller belittled her intelligence and career in his writing. Towards the end of her life, Monroe also suffered ruinous problems in her work. Love, Marilyn, it must be said, is a sympathetic rather than sychophantic portrait. It does give voice to directors like George Cukor who accused Monroe of a gross lack of professionalism. But it also suggests that the actress was used as a scapegoat for the sins of others.

All in all, Love, Marilyn is formally flawed but certainly interesting and significant. Drawing on a variety of sources, it presents important arguments. As Garbus highlights Monroe’s achievements and cultural contribution, it cannot be said to just be another miserabilist take on the icon. All the same, a more focused, unhurried approach would have been more helpful and the arguments could have been developed further. I would personally like to have spent more time with the biographers and film historians interviewed. Hopefully, however, Love, Marilyn, will encourage viewers to review, or discover, the star’s performances and read more about her life and career. The more you learn about Monroe, the more fascinating she becomes. There is the sadness–the abuse, exploitation, and deep psychological suffering–but there is also the originality, self-invention, ambition, intellectual curiosity, empathy and sexuality. I also hope that Love, Marilyn will inspire documentarians out there–particularly feminist filmmakers–to explore the complexities of this most enduring, ground-breaking star.