Forever Marilyn Blu-ray Collectiont Review

• 9th Aug 2012

Contained on this four disc set are four of Marilyn Monroe’s best comedies: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire (both 1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and the outstanding Some Like it Hot (1959). There couldn’t be four better films representing her career. To see these films on Blu-ray is a rarefied treat. Monroe always wanted to be a serious actress and started out as a supporting actress in a number of serious films through the first half of the 1950s including All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle (both 1950) and Clash by Night (1952) and ended her career with the moody The Misfits (1961). But throughout this box set the viewer can see her fostering the image she is best remembered for, that of the hour glass dumb blonde; seemingly not very bright but somehow in control and streetwise. Many would argue that this is the only character that she should, would or could play but looking at her career as a whole this is not the case. Even with the dumb blonde character on these four films there are nuances between her roles as the diamond seduced Lorelei Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), the ditzy Paula Debovoire (How to Marry a Millionaire), the nice but dumb girl upstairs (The Seven Year Itch) or the damaged and disappointed alcoholic Sugar Kane (Some Like it Hot).

In the earliest of the quartet, Gentleman Prefer Blondes MM is teamed with Jane Russell who as a pair of cabaret singers and dancer friends go on a cruise across the Atlantic to Paris in order that Lorelei Lee (Monroe) can get her lovestruck millionaire beau (Tommy Noonan) to follow her over and marry her. She is ‘chaperoned’ by her friend Dorothy Shaw (Russell) who is more interested in drooling over the male Olympic team (she sings the campy, even homo-erotic ‘Is There Anyone Her for Love?’ to the muscle bound athletes) while Lorelei is in pursuit of sourcing the richest man on the cruise who turns out to be a an old British diamond mine owner she calls ‘Piggy’ (played by the ruddy cheeked and rotund Charles Coburn) landing her in even more trouble. In the meantime she is being spied on by her fiancée’s father who has hired a private detective who falls for Russell. There are so many great tunes and numbers here, making it clear that Monroe and Russell worked really well together and even duet on a couple of songs including ‘When Love Goes Wrong’. But it is the iconic and unforgettable ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ which sticks out the most. I have to say that of all the Blu-rays of old movies the Technicolor and clarity come out better on this than on any other film I have seen and is almost dazzling in its transfer and brightness. Apart from a couple of trailers the only extra worthy of note is a short piece of Movietone News with Monroe and Russell making their marks in front of the Graumann’s Chinese Theatre in LA.

How to Marry a Millionaire was released shortly after and Marilyn is reduced to a supporting part to the stronger Lauren Bacall. This pair and Betty Grable play a models friends who move into a swanky New York apartment and between them are fed up of the soda jerk guys they usually end up with and plan to catch themselves a millionaire each. Of course things don’t pan out as they had hoped and Bacall is pursued by a man she assumes is a garage attendant who turns out to be one of the illegible men in New York. Marilyn provides most of the comedy as the short sighted Paula and although her part is small it is funny and memorable. The only other extra on the DVD bar the standard trailers and different languages is a Movietone clip of the films premiere.

The Seven Year Itch was based off a popular stage play written by George Axelrod. 20th Century Fox and Billy Wilder invited Axelrod with Wilder to adapt the play for the screen. Tom Ewell revived the same part for the film that of the family man who packs off his wife and son to the country for the summer holidays while he stays in the city to work along with all the other men in New York. As soon as the wives are gone the men are out drinking and chasing women. Richard Sherman (Ewell) doesn’t want to be the same and talks himself out of bad behaviour until he sees the blonde who’s rented the apartment upstairs. His imagination goes into overdrive and he invites her to his apartment for a drink and to commit adultery. The studio Production Code was still in force when the film was released and the play had to be watered down somewhat for the screen, but Wilder did his best with the material when he made it breaking many taboos along the way. On the disc, as with all the DVDs there are commentaries and a soundtrack only track as well as curiously a meter that pops up on one track where it challenges the Hay’s Production Code as well as a documentary about the code. There is also a documentary about Wilder and Monroe and the making of the film which has a lot of production stills I have not seen before which includes talk around the iconic skirt in the air over the subway grate.

Some Like It Hot needs little introduction. This is the only black and white film in the set and is generally considered the best film (it was voted the Best Comedy of All Time by the AFI in 2000) although is not necessarily Marilyn’s best performance. The story is set among the gangland wars in Chicago in 1929 with Prohibition in full-swing. Spats Colombo (George Raft) massacres Toothpick Charlie (George E. Stone) and his gang for grassing his liquor operation to the police. Two witnesses to the ensuing St. Valentine’s Day Massacre are musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) who go on the run fearing for their lives. They hide out as women in Sweet Sue’s Syncopators, an all girl jazz band. On the train down to Florida both ‘men’ befriend the alcoholic and jaded Sugar Kane (MM) and vie for her affections. ‘Geraldine’ (Curtis) has the most success when he learns what she is after in men and takes on the guise of a millionaire to the point of even adopting a Cary Grant voice (“nobody talks like that” laments Lemmon). Meanwhile ‘Daphane’ (Lemmon) has problems of his own from being pinched in the elevator by Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III playing a randy millionaire who famously ends the film where Lemmon gives in to his advances, admits he’s a man yet Osgood still doesn’t mind. Lemmon and Brown steal the film even from Monroe but as is usually the case the film is best remembered for starring Marilyn Monroe in one of Wilder’s greatest comedies. Sadly there were no extras on the copy I received but as a set there couldn’t be a better selection of films representing Monroe’s career and it was great to revisit these films again.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (5/5)

How to Marry a Millionaire (4/5)

The Seven Year Itch (4/5)

Some Like it Hot (5/5)

Chris Hick