Marilyn Monroe and the Return of Newsweek

Marilyn Monroe Covergirl 2014

 How Many Ways Can You Exploit A Dead Woman?

“She had maggots and leeches all over her.” That’s a paraphrase of Robert Crumb’s comment on Janice Joplin, but it holds true for the earlier Marilyn Monroe, too. Sadly, the maggots and leeches are still making their money off Monroe. That’s one of the few interesting facts I picked up out of the Neo Pulp offerings about Marilyn Monroe currently on our nation’s newsstands.

Graydon Carter is smiling in his grave right now. (I know he’s not dead, but given his fondness for dead women, I could not pass at the chance for a cheap shot. Never let it be said that I’ve squandered a cheap shot opportunity.) America’s Favorite Dead Woman has made a roaring comeback, now held over into its second year. Marilyn Monroe is featured on not one, but two Neo Pulps.

For those of you who are confused as to what a Neo Pulp is: “A seeming magazine, normally with the name of a discontinued magazine on it, which is printed on hard stock and displayed at such places where magazines can be found. Unlike a real magazine, it is not a part of a continuing periodical series, but rather a special issue. Most of them are focused on a single topic, generally sensational in nature.”

Like Monroe herself, both of the special issues dedicated to her are from magazines which are themselves currently deceased. One is being put out by the original publisher, the other by a publisher who has somehow acquired the name of the magazine. Both parties have shelled out a petty fortune for the privilege of invading a dead 36 year old woman’s privacy. I hope their mothers are very proud of them.

If Marilyn Monroe had lived, she would have been 88 years old today. Had anyone cared half as much about her in life as they have in death, she might have made it to 88. She has now been dead for a very long time. She didn’t make it through the Kennedy Administration.

Pictured above is the only photo I can find of the dubious THE VIOLATIONS OF THE CHILD MARILYN MONROE by "Her Psychiatrist Friend." This 1962 work was the first of many attempts to cash in on Monroe's post-death flush of fame. It  also marked the end of the publishing career of the person who brought us I WAS HITLER'S DOCTOR.  The Wonderblog has covered this publisher in some depth. (See I Was Hitler's Doctor.) To be generous, this book is fiction. To be accurate, it's illustrated kiddie porn as fiction with a famous person's name tacked on for marketing purposes.  

All of this interest and investment has forced me to conclude that research is showing that only geezers are bothering with the magazine racks these days. As with the death of Dime Novels, the industry seems to be content with replaying its greatest hits to a nostalgia audience as opposed to attempting to attract new consumers.

Have no doubt about it: Marilyn Monroe is the Napoleon of the Magazine Industry. I would say Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan, but they cannot recycle. She is the Beatles of the staged photograph—the avenues for repackaging are endless. There isn’t much you can do with her movies, but that’s a technological issue. Repurposing dead actors in new works is on the horizon.*

Marilyn Monroe’s material is rather thin when it comes to movies. As a covergirl, she’s plenty deep. She is a little caught in time—as people who have been dead for fifty-two years tend to be. Rotoscope her nudes and tack on some new clothes and she’s ready for another hundred years.

Not to give anyone any ideas out there. These two recycling jobs are bad enough. Determining which one is worse and why is my real quandary. But let’s go with the faint praise first. Marilyn Monroe looks very pretty in all of the photographs. It is possible to blow a shot of this woman and both “containers” have selected their shots wisely. As competing Greatest Hits collections, they are both on a par with each other. If I had to pick, I would go with the Life magazine version. Marilyn Monroe actually had some relationship with Life magazine, so its better effort makes sense. The Life version also has a theme and is all over better written and laid out.

Boy, is this a dubious idea. A dubious idea twin spin. It seems geezer publisher minds think alike. Life has a long track record of whoring out its history. That Newsweek would use this tribute format as its debut back into print is fairly telling of what the new publisher thinks the value of its trademark actually is. I’m not sure if the “Newsweek” logo was value-added or not. Newsweek never covered Marilyn Monroe. ** It certainly did not make a habit of covergirling her. So what Newsweek’s relationship is to its subject is a mystery.

Neither of these Neo Pulps has any urgent need for existence. There is no new Marilyn Monroe news. There never will be. Like Generalismo Francisco Franco, Marilyn Monroe is still dead. In fact, she’s been dead longer.

Newsweek’s fine tribute features a scrap book—written in crayon—by the subject herself. It’s played up on the cover, but downplayed in the contents—in true Pulp style. If that’s the draw, it’s clearly not worth the price.

(Mentioning that your subject wrote in crayon makes her seem stupid and is disrespectful. It should also be noted that she didn’t write any of this for publication. It was given as  keepsake to a boyfriend. That the boyfriend’s family is now cashing it in is on a par with the love letters from Liz Taylor that were being shopped around. At some point publishers need to have a gag reflex. Or the fate of Ted Williams is just the beginning.)

I actually do not know who is publishing the Newsweek version. Their website cops to it, but I didn’t think Internet Business News or whatever their parent calls itself had that sort of jack. If you click around Newsweek’s site a bit, you will discover that they have no staff and are being submission driven at this point. Apparently this Marilyn Monroe tribute is the type of thing they are willing to greenlight.  Welcome to the world of low end coffee table book publishing, web gurus.

Coffee table books are what these two offerings are. They don’t rise much beyond that of your average stroke book (about a dead woman). Yep, she’s one really sexy dead woman. Really dead, though.   

(There’s a word for people who go on and on about how sexy dead women are. And I’m going to stop using it because it’s drawing the wrong type of traffic to my blog.)

In life, Marilyn Monroe had one unique talent: the ability to make certain poses work in motion. It’s hard to do—and no one has ever done it better, Vogue-ing while delivering lines and attempting to act, to the degree that she did, is very difficult. There are plenty of models out there whose careers never extend beyond the still photo. Most know they’re dead the moment they move or open their mouths. Marilyn Monroe pulled it off—in limited quantities—but she pulled it off. No one has since.

All of this is nostalgia for that act. And it was an act. The pretty woman from the picture moves pretty. She talks pretty. She seems as enticing lingering as she did at first glance. That’s a great act, the capstone of her idiom.

The number of people who remember that act are in dwindling supply. The pictures now look dated. The few films where she really shines are not relevant enough to bring in any new fans. One wonders about the direction of the magazine industry when efforts like this are considered so sure fire that two publishers delve into the same well simultaneously.

The real Marilyn Monroe was stem to stern pathetic. Her end is the one shared by Elvis and Howard Hughes—dying alone, exploited by henchmen to the last and then more so after death. If you buy either of these offerings, you too can contribute to this dismal cycle.***

In short, nothing new here. You can take a pass on both.

*Repurposing actors has been happening in print and on commercials for some time. Hacking together a new performance for a long form work is still in the future. Mostly because it might be more expensive to do at this point than it is worth.

**Celebs were not the focus of Newsweek in the 1950s and 1960s. They covered her to the extent that she was newsworthy.

***Yes, I bought mine, mister store detective. We will make an effort to keep up with the world of Neo Pulps as my budget and reading time allows for. Covering this subject is one of our exclusive domains in blog-dom. No one else has even come up with a name for these stand alone magazines as yet. I’m not sure how long they are going to last as a trend. I fear that a future Magazine Musings will be covering the subject of major retailers removing their magazine racks.