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Episode 136 -- Marilyn Monroe (Patreon)

Published:
2026-05-20 06:05:17
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

For this episode, Moira guides Adrian through the life, career and legacy of Marilyn Monroe, and the role gender played in all three. Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926 -- so her centennial is coming up in a few weeks. We touch on Monroe's suffering, her canny manipulation of her own image, and the political dimension of her public persona.

Here are some of the books and articles we refer to in the episode:

Joyce Carol Oates, "Blonde"

Norman Mailer, "Marilyn, A Biography" (NOT an endorsement)

Gloria Steinem, Marilyn Monroe: Norma Jeane

Jaqueline Rose, Women in Dark Times

Lois Banner, "Marilyn Monroe: proto-feminist?"

Comments

Melanie Mayne

“… Marilyn Monroe??? … Fuck yeah.”

Athina

Jesus christ! You said it, man 😅

Rosie

Yes please yes please to midcentury revisionist Freudianism episode! Several months ago I learnt on a podcast that sometimes psychodynamic people are feminists and it has been blowing my mind ever since (please don't laugh at me I'm only a mathematician )

Jackie

New favorite episode????

Charley

Well, Arthur Miller was a complete cock 🤦🏼‍♀️

Joy

So glad you did this episode! Moiras article in Bookforum got me hooked and this was everything I’d hoped it would be! Great episode (as always)

Elias

I'm sorry, the thing that makes her physically a woman?

Cailyn McGrath

The backstory of how Hugh Hefner got the Marilyn pictures for the first issue of playboy is disgusting, as is the fact that Hefner bought the spot in the crypt next to her. Even in death this woman cannot get any peace from disgusting men.

tina dee garland

The piano mentioned around 50 min mark now belongs to Mariah Carey btw

MARIA PRAMAGGIORE

I’ve been working on a similar project related to Sharon Tate…if MM was America’s atomic blonde then ST was our counterculture’s sacrifice. This is also partly inspired by Rose’s excellent book Women in Dark Times. There’s so much here to discover! Thanks .

MARIA PRAMAGGIORE

ST also struggling to navigate the Hefner orbit.

Sarah Stockton

I loved this and it kind of made me curious if y’all would ever be interested in discussing Sydney Sweeney’s Whole Deal/Euphoria s3. But also I would feel guilty about subjecting Moira to Euphoria s3.

Lewis Beer

I loved Moira’s comments about the way people emphasise Monroe’s agency to avoid confronting her victimhood, but also deny her volitional acts when they interfere with the preferred narrative. Anthony Summers, in his 1985 biography of Marilyn Monroe, is consistently sceptical about the sexual violence she claimed to have suffered. In Bed With the Right fans will not be surprised to learn that he cites Freud as a source: “Professional controversy still whirls around Sigmund Freud’s so-called seduction theory, which proposed that the sexual abuse of children by adults was a primary cause of neurosis. Freud himself is said to have abandoned the theory later, shifting to the view that most patients’ claims of sexual abuse are fantasy rather than fact. […] Real or imagined, Norma Jeane would never put her childhood horror story behind her.” The idea that Monroe invented or ‘imagined’ her unhappy early life often goes hand in hand with the narrative that sees her as carefully constructing and managing her public image. The fact that she was so good at the latter – which of course she was – becomes a justification for calling her a liar if she says anything that makes the biographer uncomfortable. This makes me think of Depp v. Heard as well, where people clamoured to tell themselves that Heard was acting/lying (or rather ‘a liar’, as if that was her profession), but seemed unable to identify Depp’s behaviour as a performance. We’re so eager to suspend disbelief and buy into something we should know is a fairytale, but also desperate to deny reality by re-casting it as fiction.

A Felt

Another absolute banger of an episode!! I really appreciated the discussion of historiography and how attempts to emphasize Monroe’s agency can downplay her oppression. Unfortunately I see that trend a lot in feminist pop history.

Zosia M

When I was a young teenager and staying at my aunt’s for a weekend, I ended up reading my older cousin’s copy of “Are You a Marilyn or a Jackie?”. It was a bad book to read while going through puberty and discovering my own idea of womanhood, I’ll tell you this much.

beebah in boston

Love this episode. I think I first became aware of Monroe as a full human, not a sexy paper doll, when I read my babysitter's paperback of Shelly Winters' autobiography when I was about 10 years old. Winters & Monroe shared an apartment for a while, and Winters wrote about what a hungry reader Monroe was. She also remembered the gap between Monroe's intelligence and her education. I reread it when I was in my 20s (still a long time ago). Highly recommend for a memoir of the old studio system. PS- think you might have one thing wrong, maybe, but I'll email about it separately

JanaKat

Good gods, however rough I expected this episode to be, it was so much rougher. Poor Marilyn.

Moira Donegan

My wife is watching Euphoria and I can’t bear to even be in the room! You might be made of tougher stuff than me. But you’re right that we should probably do the Sweenysode.

visualsustenance

I loved this episode, but a small note that only underlines your argument, Warhol's Monroe paintings were made in 1962 almost immediately after her death. I'm and art and fashion history professor and have taught those works for many years. The immediacy of them always struck me. He used a film still from Niagara, which is also interesting since it was an early film, and one of her more complex roles. Also it's been a long time since I saw it, but I remember Bus Stop being really compelling! Thanks for a fantastic show!!

Astraea

I understand the point you're trying to make, and I agree, but "what makes you a woman is your ability to carry and birth children" was a pretty common attitude in mid-century America, iirc. Even if it wasn't someone's individual attitude, it was absolutely the cultural attitude. What is the 50's housewife if not a mother/mother in waiting? It's pretty fucked up, but also, I can't really blame Monroe or any woman for feeling complicated things about it - if you're simultaneously being told you're the ultimate living example of American womanhood in ways that are very harmful to you, and also your body won't do the most physical "womanly" thing (as seen at the time) that you actually *want* it to do, I can imagine that would fuck you up something fierce.

Astraea

I wrote a paper on Bus Stop when I was in high school (comparing the play and the movie, iirc). Considering the setting and subject matter, I really wasn't expecting much, but I remember the movie being much more nuanced - emotionally and psychologically - than I was expecting. (It's also strange because it has *so little* in common with the play, plot wise, but somehow end up having the same emotional story. High school me was very intrigued.)

Astraea

Jfc. Go die in a fire, Anthony Summers!

Moira Donegan

A lot of them said this! It seems like no one believed her in print until Steinem.

Moira Donegan

Oh good catch! Thank you for this FC.

J Gracie

Funny you bring this up! I was thinking how Marilyn's journey to Hollywood so closely mirrors Cassie's current storyline.

Sarah Stockton

Totally. And SS the actress seems to be this funhouse mirror of MM, seemingly wanting to actively dumb herself and her roles down to fit the “Marilyn” archetype.

Rebecca Ross

I loved this and completely second the desire to hear an episode on Midcentury Revisionist Freudism and Ralph Greenson. I’m a psychotherapist and studied Freud and I’m curious about how Freud’s own choice to shift away from his early theories of sexual trauma out of fear it would implicate his benefactors (the fathers and husbands of his female patients) and turning toward internal and unconscious fantasies instead continued to impact patients. Marilyn had so much trauma she survived that deserved naming and recognition and a trusting container and I could see the absence of that validation and a male psychoanalyst with poor boundaries and a savior problem as re-enacting that harm.

Charlotte

Absolutely love the show! This was such a great episode. What tipped me from "listener" to "Patreon subscriber" was the hint of a Freudianism episode. I'm a psychologist and I hate hate hate Freudian Psychology. Please, I'm begging you!

Stephanie Corbitt

Came to comment this! Pleaseeee do a revisionist Freudianism episode. I’m also here for a Marilyn part 2 that focuses on her relationships with the psychoanalysts thrust upon her.

Ellis

Love you guys, but please keep this podcast inclusive of your trans listeners. Moira says "this thing that made her physically a woman - this uterus" around 56:30ish. It doesn't sound like Moira is quoting anyone and if there are meant to be air-quotes implying a societal attitude, please make that clear. It sounds like Moira has a bioessentialist view of sex/gender. I want to believe that's not true, but there have been other times when trans-exclusionary comments have slipped through. I'm not against hearing about transphobic things in the context of critiques, etc. But I hear too much transphobia in my daily life to cope with hearing it from podcasters I subscribe to as well. Thanks for reading 🙏🏻 P.S. Also shout out to the cis women without uteri for whatever reason. You're still women 😊

Ellis

Of course, but Moira didn't indicate that she was quoting Monroe or referencing a cultural attitude. There were no air quotes implied. So it sounds like it's just Moira's attitude, which is why it's hurtful to trans listeners. We're living through unprecedentedly transphobic times, so it's important to make it clear if you're not. (By the way, I've listened to pretty much every IBWTR episode, so it's not like I'm missing context of their opinions - if anything this complaint is building on the fact that other episodes have included bioessentialist comments too. Trans people don't stop existing just because it's not an episode specifically about transness.)

Lewis Beer

This is just my perspective, but I very much heard air-quotes around that phrase. It is (unfortunately) a common theme in Marilyn Monroe commentary to say that her failure to have a baby constituted a failure to fulfil her purpose as a woman, and there is evidence that Monroe herself internalised some of these feelings (though also, interestingly, that she had complex and sometimes negative feelings about creating a 'little Norma Jeane' who might experience the same problems she did). When Moira says, 'this thing that made her physically a woman, this uterus, isn't doing what she wants it to because of her endometriosis,' if I didn't hear those air-quotes I would have to believe she is also expressing a pro-natalist point of view: that she is saying, 'Marilyn's uterus made her a woman, therefore not having babies made her a failed woman.' And I don't think it's tenable to read either Moira or Adrian as buying into pro-natalist rhetoric, given their track-record on this! It seems to me that the overall argument of the episode is that Monroe had to operate according to various poisonous ideas about 'what a woman is', and that whether she lived up to these ideas or fell short of them, the result (for her) was a profound unhappiness. Within this is a critique of the exact kind of bio-essentialism you're picking up on. But you may be right that, especially in the current climate, it's a good idea to underline when a concept is being invoked critically, rather than simply being voiced and validated.