My Week With Marilyn - a first review, by Liz Smith

American columnist Liz Smith has given her view on MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, it has not opened here in the UK yet (next week) but I can quite agree with her individual point of view, particularly on Dominic Cooper (who is also playing Uday Hussein currently) as Milton Greene, and then there is Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller - lightweight or what? (MM was staying with Milton Greene and his wife then, he took some the best photographs of her during that time).

Here is Smith's view:

"Much has been said — mostly by the film’s star, Michelle Williams — about the difficulty of portraying the many sides of Marilyn, her variety of voices and personas. Miss Williams is a wonderful actress and no doubt she means every word she utters, but the Marilyn of her creation is a dreary, depressed, dim creature. In fact, it is the Marilyn of Arthur Miller’s “The Misfits.” (Marilyn hated her role in that film, complaining endlessly of the girl’s passivity.)

This movie is based on the highly suspect memoirs of Colin Clark, a lowly go-fer on the set of “The Prince and the Showgirl,” which was filmed in London, in 1956. Colin and Monroe became “close” he averred. The characterization offers nothing of Monroe’s wit, humor, intelligence or — and this is vital — her anger. Her reactions to events were not always a depressed collapse. She was capable of intense, extraordinary rages. She had a sharp tongue. She could fight back, and she did. But “My Week With Marilyn” presents nothing but her fears. Or a perceived stupidity. Williams has to utter lines like, “Gee, I wish I could read all these books” when entering a library, or, “I met the Queen. She said my dress was pretty.”

Worse, all the other characters in the film — Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh, Eddie Redmayne as Colin — are compelled to say how “extraordinary” Monroe is, despite her neurotic behavior. Then we see Miss Williams enacting various scenes from “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Problem? She is not Marilyn Monroe. And so, she does not seem extraordinary at all. I admire Miss Williams for her efforts and sincerity, but in the end, she has given one more imperfect impersonation of Marilyn.

HOWEVER, the worst served by “My Week With Marilyn” is the late photographer Milton Greene. This man admired and loved Marilyn, encouraged her ambitions, supported her financially during her year-long strike against 20th Century Fox. He co-produced “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Their partnership ended badly, but he never spoke ill of her, never exploited their relationship or her image. Dominic Cooper plays Milton like a foul-mouthed NYC gangster, just another user. One wonders what Amy Greene, Milton’s ex-wife, who lived through The Marilyn Years with Milton, would think of this portrayal. (I ran into Amy Greene by chance, just last year. Still razor-sharp, she spoke lovingly of both Marilyn and Milton, “That was their golden time,” she said.)

You know what? Just check out “The Prince and the Showgirl” the next time Turner Classic Movies runs it. It is a testament to the talents of Monroe and Milton Greene.

No more pretty blonde ladies playing dress up, pretending to be Marilyn. It just doesn’t work. Sorry, Michelle."

Now let's see how the English critics respond! As I have said before here, Jack Cardiff who photographed THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL caught Marilyn at her loveliest, he liked her a lot and has a very perceptive chapter on her in his essential autobiography MAGIC HOUR which renders all those other MM books redundant.

My week with Marilyn ?

This is going to be one fascinating movie - but will it work? Michelle Williams who was so great in MEEK'S CUTOFF (review at Westerns label) is hardly one's first choice as Marilyn, but judging by the clips she somehow seems to convey the essence of MM without impersonating her. All the other girls who played Marilyn (ususally in cheesy telemovies) were of course hilariously awful, this though could be interesting. Some unusual casting too - Kenneth Branagh should be able to suggest Olivier, and Judi Dench Dame Sybil Thorndike - but Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller?

It is of couse based on the book by Colin Clark and captures Monroe at an interesting juncture. She has been tired of being the 20th Century Fox sex symbol and had moved to New York where her friend Milton Greene and others had taken some wonderful studies of her and then they set up this filmTHE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL to be made in England and directed by Laurence Olivier who also stars, and photographed by ace cameraman Jack Cardiff, who liked her a lot, as per his book MAGIC HOUR. It was of course a legendary troubled shoot, as detailed in all those Monroe books, but did she ever look lovelier even crammed into that tight dress? We will always have the film, I saw it again a while back, not entirely successful but it has some lovely moments [review at MM, Cardiff labels]. It should be fascinating then to see how it is presented here ....

R.I.P: Jimmy Sangster

Jimmy Sangster [1927-2011] was a scriptwriter who helped put Hammer Films firmly on the '50s movie map. He became one of the driving, creative forces behind the legendary Hammer Studios, scripting many of their successes. In 1957 he wrote the sceenplay for THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN their first horror film shot in colour, followed by DRACULA and in 1959 THE MUMMY all starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, with good production values. My particular favourite was THE BRIDES OF DRACULA in 1960 - as per my previous post here, see Horror label.

Sangster said in an interview that he was given a free hand with the scripts - the only restriction was, regarding the FRANKENSTEIN movies, they could not use the bolts in the head, as those were copyrighted. Of course the films got worse as the series went on. He had a break from the Gothic with thrillers like A TASTE OF FEAR and THE NANNY for which they imported Bette Davis and some good English players: Jill Bennett, Wendy Craig, James Villiers. Sangster also produced and scripted the madly camp over the top film of a hit play THE ANNIVERSARY again teaming Davis with most of the cast of the play, including Sheila Hancock. I saw the original production of the play which had Mona Washbourne as the tyrant mother, Bette certainly made it her own, with that eyepatch!

He directed later Hammers like LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN. But by then audiences had tired of their cheap and cheerful production values. Terence Fisher usually directed those early popular Hammer titles. Sangster also wrote novels, and was married to that very lovely individual actress Mary Peach. His many years in the business are indicative of the talent of a prolific and much-respected screenwriter whose films continue to be enjoyed to this day.

A reminder of pure glamour

Just a few reminders: Marlene and Marilyn, 2 from 1962 - that young couple from BOCCACCIO 70 (Marisa Solinas and Germano Gilioli) and Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint in ALL FALL DOWN; 3 heart-throbs: Guy Madison, Jean Sorel, Terence Stamp; Alain Delon and Romy Schneider making arriving by plane look glamorous; a Deneuve luggage advert, Trintignant and Anouk in UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME; Gina, Claudia and Sophia showing star-wattage; the gals in THE OPPOSITE SEX, 1956 and Kay Kendall, Rex Harrison and Angela Lansbury displaying star power in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, 1958, and of course Monica. More on these and more at labels for each, and Glamour label!

Dirk at war again ....

A perfect Bogarde pose!

This time as Major Patrick Leigh Fermor [see Books, Greece labels] in ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT in 1957, the last of his 50s wartime capers - THE WIND CANNOT READ being mainly a (doomed) love story set in India. We are in Crete this time, in this final collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger - who after those great '40s films I love like BLACK NARCISSUS, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, THE RED SHOES, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH etc hit a lean patch in the '50s: THE TALES OF HOFFMAN was not a success and neither was the rare OH ROSALINDA! (which I now have a copy of to watch, review soon). They then did THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE in '56 and ILL MET in 57.







Dirk plays Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died this year - I did a obit notice at the time - and it is based on the true story of how during the war he was living with the partisans in occupied Crete and how they kidnapped a German general and got him off the island and on a ship to Cairo. It is boys-own stuff really and for a war film there is a surprising lack of action. so it's another World War II mission story, and there have been dozens. It IS more civilised than most. Bogarde leads the cast with Marius Goring as the general who comes to respect his captors. The likes of Chrisopher Lee and Cyril Cusack are in the background.

The star on set - with the Rolls in the background ...

Tony on the upside ...

MISTER CORY. I remember seeing this in 1957 as we young lads all saw Tony Curtis films then. This must have been the one (apart from TRAPEZE) which got him into more serious fare with the likes of Lancaster and Douglas, like SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. He is another ambitious young guy on the make here, with all that Universal-International gloss, as directed and co-scripted by Blake Edwards. Cory gets a busboy job at a swanky lakeside resort and sets his cap at Martha Hyer, perfecting her country club girl persona. Her younger sister is Kathryn Grant, who has an agenda of her own, and shows once again she was one of the nicer ingénues of the time (before giving it up to marry some crooner). Cory rises and opens his own gambling casino, but finds that while Martha romances him she has no intention of marrying beneath her. Whats great about this now is seeing two old timers having roles to sink their teeth into: Charles Bickford as the (as suggested elsewhere, possibly gay) gambling man taking the young kid under his wing, and Henry Daniell as the very snobbish manager of the resort whom Cory recruits to manage his own joint. Henry rises to the occasion splendidly.







Sidney Falco in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and that killer lead in Wilder's perennial SOME LIKE IT HOT (only the best comedy ever written) are direct follow-ons from the ambitious young Mister Cory, cementing Tony's great decade. Another good Blake Edwards one, which I remember liking a lot then but never seen since, is 1958's comedy THE PERFECT FURLOUGH - with his wife Janet Leigh. He is another shyster army guy on the make here - it was called STRICTLY FOR PLEASURE here in the UK, Furlough being a word we do not use here.

Ladies in lavender (or lilac)

PAL JOEY is a so-so musical I had not seen since I was about 12 - but I was transfixed by it seeing it again over the weekend - its a diluted version (for 1957) of the show, but Kim Novak looks incredible in that lilac or lavender clinging dress with matching gloves. Rita looks good too as the reformed stripper whom Frank sings "The Lady Is A Tramp" to, and of course that cute doggie ... Kim's finest hour perhaps? - though I also like her lavender hair look in 1958's BELL BOOK AND CANDLE (and then there is VERTIGO...). A report on her other 1957 starrer JEANNE EAGLES coming up soon ...



A delicious anecdote by Dame Eileen Atkins in the weekend papers, on when she and Judi Dench and that great cast (Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Francesca Annis etc) were making the hit series CRANFORD a few years ago. The dames were got up in their period dresses and bonnets and while waiting for their cue to go on Judi turned to Eileen and asked "come on, tell me - what have you had done? there must be something...", Eileen retorted "If I had something done, do you think I would look like this" looking her most severe as the Victorian spinster. Collapse of both ladies laughing. Eileen (the original Childie in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE) also spills the beans on the night Colin Farrell tried to get her into bed .... Judi of course was also marvellous in LADIES IN LAVENDER with her pal Dame Maggie - and probably had the best number in the otherwise forgettable NINE ! Dames !

People We Like: Clifton Webb

Clifton Webb [1998-1966] was a phenomenon. A famous dancer in the ‘20s, he became a leading man in the ‘40s and ‘50s when audiences loved his acerbic waspish persona. He led several box-office hits, was friends with all the in-crowd (the Oliviers, Coward, the Bogarts, the Lufts as per all those photographs) while remaining, in that conservative era, a “confirmed bachelor” who famously lived with his mother, Maybelle.



In his twenties he was a professional ballroom dancer and appeared on the stage and in silent movies (which came in useful later in his 1953 comedy DREAMBOAT). His theatre career is fascinating too. LAURA in 1944 was his first big success as the effete Waldo Lydecker in Preminger’s hit thriller, a movie that endures and remains fascinating anytime. Then there was his vain snob Elliott Templeton in THE RAZOR’S EDGE in ’46 – both of which won his Oscar nominations. Then there was Mr Belvedere, his fastidious, finicky, fussy, abrasive and condescending baby sitter in SITTING PRETTY, ’48. I saw that at a Sunday matinee as a kid in the ‘50s, its one we need to see again, there were several more MR BELVEDERE films.







Other popular hits saw him as fathers with large families in the likes of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN and BELLES ON THEIR TOES. DREAMBOAT saw his as the ex-silent star, now a sedate college professor, whose old silent movies are revived on tv, with Anne Francis and Jeffrey Hunter as his daughter and her beau. Negulesco cast him opposte Stanwyck on that 1953 version of TITANTIC, where he does the noble thing. Young Robert Wagner, whom he seems to have mentored, was the juvenile lead. He was also Sousa in MARCHING ALONG.



The 1950s saw those successes THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, ’54 though I do not care for his role in this – he is perfect though as Ernest Gifford, the motor magnate in WOMAN’S WORLD, also for Negulesco, in ’54 (see separate post below). THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS was a success in 1956, where he masterminds this plot to fool the Nazis, and was followed by another successful Negulesco film, my childhood favourite BOY ON A DOLPHIN, as Victor Parmalee the avid art collecter who wants the statue that Greek diver Sophia Loren finds. He and Loren play nicely together, and the film, a programmer really, still plays nicely today – this is the one that introduced Loren to international audiences, emerging from the Aegean in that wet dress …



THE REMARKABLE MR PENNYPACKER and HOLIDAY FOR LOVERS (on vacation with wife Jane Wyman and daughters Jill St John and Carol Lynley) followed in ’59, pleasant holiday fare really. His last film was SATAN NEVER SLEEPS in 1962, which I have not seen, where he and William Holden are priests in China, for Leo McCarey. Clifton lived with his mother until her death aged 91, six years before his own death in ’66. He remained a star to the end and is always eminently watchable now.

Jean Negulesco

Off on the Titanic, 1953: Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Thelma Ritter...
and those MILLIONAIRE gals!

Jean Negulesco – a director whose life [which spanned the 20th century] is more interesting than any film! Born in Romania in 1900 he died in Marbella, Spain aged 93, in 1993 and was a director of note in the 1940s and 1950s, providing us with some interesting ‘40s noirs and those polished star-studded entertainments of the ‘50s. (Right, Negulesco with Sophia Loren and her stand-in Scilla Gabel, in 1957 on BOY ON A DOLPHIN, one of the first movies set in Greece - I love that little Greek travelogue at the start .... Greece was so undiscovered then!).

It reads like something devised by Hemingway, or as colorful as Hawks or Huston: He left home at 12, washed dishes in Paris, and worked in a field hospital on the Western Front in World War I. Then he returned to Paris and his art studies becoming an accomplished painter.

In the ‘20s he travelled across the United States, financing himself by selling his paintings and then he arrived in Hollywood and was soon at work in the movie industry as a sketch artist and technical advisor. He worked up to assistant director on movies like CAPTAIN BLOOD and signed a contract with Warners in 1940. His first feature was THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS in ’44 with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Negulesco's experience as an artist had provided him with a keen eye for effective shots and the ability to set a scene to create atmosphere. His HUMORESQUE was another vivid hit (a triumph of style over content) with great roles for Joan Crawford (one of her greatest) and John Garfield. He also directed Jane Wyman’s award-winning role in JOHNNY BELINDA, 1948.



He then became a contract director at 20th Century Fox – ROADHOUSE is a terrific little noir, which I first saw at a Sunday matinee sometime in the '50s and it remained a key movie for me, Ida Lupino is terrific as the hard-boiled chanteuse who is hired by the deranged Jefty (Widmark) to sing at his roadhouse, but once she falls for Cornel Wilde, it gets very tense indeed. He directed THE MUDLARK in England, and then that early TITANIC in ’53 with Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner and Thelma Ritter. He then reinvented himself as the director for glossy entertainments, mainly Fox’s “3 girls sharing an apartment and looking for love” movies.



Like Rex Harrison with Mankiewicz, Clifton Webb was the ideal actor for Negulesco. He leads the cast in THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, a massive hit in 1954 – but before that was HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, one of the first CinemaScope movies and a super hit cementing Marilyn Monroe as the new Fox star, and she proves a delightful comedienne here - MM in that red swimsuit was my first introduction to her. Then of course WOMAN’S WORLD in ’54, with Webb again leading a terrific cast [see next item]. I didn’t care for DADDY LONG LEGS, but simply love BOY ON A DOLPHIN, one of my key 1957 movies, where Sophia Loren dazzles as Phadrea – her scenes with Clifton as Mr Parmalee, the millionaire who wants the statue show them both to good effect. I first saw this when I was 12... a lot more on these are at MM, Loren, Bacall, 1957 labels..




A big hit in 1959 was THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, also written about here previously, as labels, with those 3 girls (originally 4 - Martha Hyer was almost snipped out) in the '50s Manhattan publishing world, with Joan Crawford "as Amanda Farrow" terrorising the typists in the typing pool. I love those moments with Hope Lange and Suzy Parker and those CinemaScope images....its a lush soaper on the level of IMITATION OF LIFE or A SUMMER PLACE.


His later films are best forgotten; he had moved to Spain in the '60s, to paint and collect art. THE PLEASURE SEEKERS (Ann-Margret, Pamea Tiffin, Carol Lynley and a reappearance by Gene Tierney) was his last interesting film in '64. Right: Carol Lynley & Gardner McKay. Other credits include JESSICA, A CERTAIN SMILE, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR - the Lana Turner/Burton one.

His biography “Things I did and things I think I did” in ’84 should be an interesting read - and I have just ordered it!