The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

 


The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborrelli 

 I think it’s impossible to talk about Marilyn Monroe without talking about mental health. 


 At the time of her death, she was in the care of her physician and had drugs prescribed but she was able to get other drugs at times. The lovely Marilyn would self-medicate to make it through her day. She would go so far as to insert drugs into places that they were never meant to be inserted. 


It seems that Little Miss Norma Jean Mortenson became an expert in how to ingest drugs in manners most of us would never conceive of. 

I don’t think it takes an expert, which I am not, to see that her issues with drugs and booze were just symptoms. Symptoms of a much larger problem.

Marilyn’s mother spent many years in SANITATIUMS. Wonderful places, I’m sure. So it’s likely Marilyn inherited her mental illness or at least her tendency toward mental illness.



So who was Marilyn Monroe? The sad thing is that Marilyn didn’t know who she was or maybe she did and tried her best to escape Norma Jean for reasons we might never know. 


There was a real person there, somewhere underneath the booze, drugs, and mental illness. Finding that real person is hard because she tried to hide it. Was it her mental illness that caused her to create the character of Marilyn Monroe? Who knows?


 It’s funny to think that Marilyn, one of the most beautiful women on film, had more difficulty in her personal life romantically than any of us could imagine. 


What most people don’t know is that Marilyn was just not as dumb as the character she portrayed. She sought out intelligent and powerful men and could keep up with them in most of their discussions.


Robert Kennedy spoke of enjoying the political conversations they had. Yup, this book goes there, well in all honesty it goes everywhere. Things with the Kennedys might not have been what we all thought. 


There is so much detail about Marilyn but it is all so fascinating, nonetheless. There is a picture of the man claimed to be Marilyn’s father. I say he was claimed to be her father by her mother. The man’s son claims he and Marilyn are in no way related. 

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