I had a weird dream last night where I was working as a camera operator on Some Like It Hot and I was covertly filming a short film in which Marilyn Monroe was delivering Molly Bloom's monologue from Ulysses and that's why she was always late to set for Wilder's film. In my dream we did multiple set-ups to make it cinematic rather than just pointing the camera at her, which in retrospect, I probably should have done in the first place. She flubbed her lines once or twice, but she knew the material.
I have no idea of if the real Norma Jean could do a Dublin accent, but in my dream she could.
The picture at the head of this post is from Clash by Night, by the way, a film notable because she doesn't use the baby doll voice for which she's famous. I picture Molly Bloom looking a bit like this. Jesus, can you imagine this woman saying:
"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
That would have melted movie screens.
I know the real Marilyn read Ulysses and lobbied for the part of Molly Bloom in a film she wanted to get off the ground. I know she got angry when producers told her that she wasn't right for a film version when she knew those producers hadn't even read it.
Anyway, she would have been 100 years old today. Hollywood squandered her talent, but she made a bunch of great films in spite of that.
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