The creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe and whiteness

Cinema Journal

Volumn 47, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 4-29

  Banner, Lois W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67649516582     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: 15272087     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.0.0030     Document Type: Review

References (191)

1. Marilyn Monroe: Photographs, 1945-1962 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959), 68
2. There are numerous variations on the iconic photo of Monroe, since many photographers shot her as she stood over the grate. Sam Shaw took the most famous one. See Sam Shaw and Norman Rosten, Marilyn among Friends (1972; New York: Henry Holt, 1987), 37-47
3. See also Richard B. Woodward, "Icomania: Sex, Death, Photography, and the Myth of Marilyn Monroe," in All the Available Light, ed. Yona Zeldis McDonough (New York: Touchstone, 2002), 10-34
4. Sam Shaw asserted that Monroe's pose was his idea, and that he derived it from photos he had taken at Coney Island of soldiers on dates with their girlfriends as wind machines under the fun house ramp blew up the womens' skirts. Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe (New York: Crown, 1998), 126-27
5. See Cyndy Hendershot, Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century America (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 52-66
6. and Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 102-44
7. On fears of male impotence, homosexuality, and Communism, see K. A. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2005)
8. and Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic, 1988)
9. Roger Vadim, Brigette Bardots mentor, modeled Bardot after Marilyn, including dyeing her hair blonde. He did the latter partly because he realized that many men fantasize about the color of blonde women's pubic hair. According to Glenys Roberts, Bardot was often asked what color her pubic hair was. Glenys Roberts, Bardot (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984), 109
10. For studies of ethnic stars, see Jill Watts, Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood (New York: Armistad, 2005)
11. Adrienne L. McLean, Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)
12. Diane Negra, Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (New York: Routledge, 2001)
13. Joanne Herschfield, The Invention of Dolores del Rio (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
14. and Shari Roberts, "'The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat': Carmen Miranda, A Spectacle of Ethnicity" Cinema Journal 32 (Spring 1993): 3-23
15. On Mae West, see Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
16. Emily Wortis Leider, Becoming Mae West (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1997)
17. Ramona Curry, Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
18. and Marybeth Hamilton, When I'm Bad I'm Better: Mae West, Sex and Popular Entertainment (New York: Harper Collins, 1995)
19. For studies of whiteness in films, see Susan Courtney, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903-1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)
20. Jane M. Gaines, Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
21. Daniel Bernardi, ed., Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)
22. Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
23. Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997)
24. Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
25. and Lester D. Friedman, ed., Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)
26. The major academic studies include S. Paige Baty, American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
27. and Graham McCann, Marilyn Monroe (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988)
28. Donald Spoto, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1993)
29. Maurice Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe (1960; New York: Perennial, 1990)
30. Anthony Summers, Goddess: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1985)
31. Fred Lawrence Guiles, Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe (1970; New York: Stein and Day 1984)
32. and Norman Mailer, Marilyn: A Biography (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1973)
33. In The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Metropolitan, 2004), Sarah Churchwell attacks all the biographies as imprecise and biased, although she fails to do the research in primary sources that might suggest better approaches
34. Richard Dyer, "Monroe and Sexuality" in Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (1987; London: Routledge, 2004), 19-66
35. Dyer, White (New York: Routledge, 1997)
36. For a review of early studies of whiteness, see Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Interrogating 'Whiteness,' Complicating 'Blackness': Remapping American Culture," American Quarterly 47 (September 1995): 428-66
37. Stuart Hall, "New Ethnicities," in Race, Culture and Difference, ed. James Donald and Ali Rattansi (London: Sage, 1992), 255
38. Bernardi, Classic Hollywood, xix
39. See, for example, Drew Faust, David Roediger, et al., "Interchange: The Practice of History," Journal of American History 90 (September 2003): 600-606
40. Ed Sitkov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 232
41. Maurice Zolotow: Billy Wilder in Hollywood (New York: Limelight, 1987)
42. Tom Wood, The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 2, 18, 31. The connection between Monroe and the monster was not accidental. The scene shot in New York was set at a Lexington Avenue theater that played only newsreels, and its marquee was redressed with the monster movie for the shoot
43. Lawrence Crown, Marilyn Monroe at Twentieth Century Fox (London: Planet, 1957), 152. The Black Lagoon creature was not in Axelrod's original play
44. George Cukor, who directed Monroe in Let's Make Love and her unfinished film, Something's Got to Give, commented: "Though Marilyn was rather modest, she also could have that total exhibitionist thing" (Gavin Lambert, On Cukor, ed. Robert Trachtenberg [New York: Rizzoli, 2000], 275)
45. "She had a genius for falling into poses which flirt with the Johnston Office regulations" (Jack Wade, "Too Hot to Handle," Modern Screen, March 1952. 103)
46. On her stardom resulting from fan male from Korea, see Barbara Berch Jamison, "Body and Soul," New York Times, July 12, 1953
47. The crowd was so noisy and the skirt blowing so revealing that Wilder, fearing the censors, shot a more modest version for the final movie on a Hollywood sound stage. According to Roy Croft, Monroe's press agent at the time, 10,000 spectators were present at the shoot, with 75 reserve policemen controlling them. Paul Weeks, "Ex-Press Agent Recalls Monroe's Magic Appeal," Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1962
48. I use the term "masquerade" in its traditional sense of a costume or mask. Joan Riviere's classic definition of "femininity" as a disguise that powerful women put on to avoid reprisals from men has value in interpreting Monroe insofar as we accept her tale of sexual abuse as a child on the part of an older man (which I accept as true) and take into account the abuse visited on her by studio executives and husbands. See Joan Riviere, "Womanliness as Masquerade," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1934)
49. My analysis of Monroe affords her more agency than have previous interpreters. In this regard, I have been influenced by queer theorists insofar as I see her Marilyn character as rooted in a camp performativity and ambiguity. I have also been influenced by interpretations of other actresses in this era as possessing a subtle and complex agency with regard to their screen roles. See, for example, Jackie Byer's "The Prime of Miss Kim Novak: Struggling Over the Feminine in the Star Image," in The Other Fifties: Interrogating Midcentury American Icons, ed. Joel Foreman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 197-223
50. See also Dennis Bingham, "'Before She Was a Virgin...' Doris Day and the Decline of Female Film Comedy in the 1950s and 1960s," Cinema Journal 45 (Spring 2006), 3-30
51. Roger Taylor, Marilyn Monroe in Her Own Words (New York: Omnibus, 1983), 40, 45
52. Susan Bernard, Bernard of Hollywood's Marilyn (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), 110
53. Eve Arnold, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 22
54. On hegemonic masculinity, see R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005)
55. Bernard, Bernard of Hollywood's Marilyn, 24
56. On the history and meaning of color, see Joseph Albers, Interaction of Color (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006)
57. Ian Paterson, A Dictionary of Colour: A Lexicon of the Language of Colour (London: Thorogood, 2003)
58. Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (New York: Ballentine, 2002)
59. and Faber Birren, Colour, Form, and Space (New York: Reinhold, 1961)
60. Diana Vreeland, Glamour! Glitter! Romance: Hollywood Costume (New York: Harry A. Abrams), 137
61. My thanks to Greg Schreiner, a collector of Marilyn dresses, for pointing out to me that the dress was off-white. The makeup quote is from Joshua Logan, Movie Stars, Real People, and Me (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978), 41
62. Hermann Melville, Moby-Dick (1851; New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 160-62
63. David Bond, Glamour in Fashion (London: Guinness, 1992), 21
64. Georgina Howell, In Vogue: Sixty Years of International Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue (New York: Schocken, 1976), 125
65. Patricia de Montfort, "White Muslin: Joanna Heffernan and the 1860s," in Whistler, Women, & Fashion, by Margaret F. MacDonald, Susan Grace Gallasi, and Aileen Ribeiro, with Patricia de Montfort (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003)
66. and Berry, Screen Style
67. On tanning, see Kerry Segrave, Suntanning in Twentieth Century America (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005)
68. For Monroe's statement, see "Marilyn Tells How She Sets the Pace," Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1960
69. James Laver, Taste and Fashion: From the French Revolution Until Today (London George G. Harrap, 1937), 193-95
70. Jane Mulvagh, Vogue History of Twentieth Century Fashion (New York: Viking, 1988), 6
71. Ruth Lynam, Couture: An Illustrated History of the Great Paris Designers and Their Creations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 67, 76
72. Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1995), 119
73. Ulrich Lehmann, Tigerspring: Fashion in Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2000)
74. Anne Massey, Hollywood Beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture (New York: Berg, 2000), 81
75. See also Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, trans. James Dunnet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987)
76. Richard Fisher, Syrie Maugham (London: Duckworth, 1979)
77. Jane S. Smith, Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 63, 123
78. Bevis Hillier, The Style of the Century, 1900-1980 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1983)
79. Cecil Beaton, The Best of Beaton (New York: Macmillan, 1968)
80. On the vogue for white, see also Jacqueline Demornex, Madeleine Vionnet (New York: Rizolli, 1991), 115
81. W. Robert LaVine, In a Glamorous Fashion: The Fabulous Years of Hollywood Costume Design (New York: Scribner, 1980), 54
82. Martin Battersby, The Decorative 1930s (London: Vista, 1971), 72-79
83. Loelia Ponsoby, Grace and Favor: The Memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Windsor (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961), 100
84. and Beverley Nicols, The Sweet and Twenties (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958), 112
85. Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel and Her World (London: Vendome, 1979), 267
86. Madge Garland, The Indecisive Decade: The World of Fashion and Entertainment in the 1930s (London: Macdonald, 1968); 72
87. Jean Patou, Chanel's rival, contended that he introduced the white dress. Jean Patou (London: Hutchinson, 1983), 117
88. Fred E. Basten, Glorious Technicolor: The Movies' Magic Screen (Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1980), 95
89. Garland, Indecisive Decade, 15
90. Beverly Heisner, Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days of the Great Studios (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), 58
91. Howard Mandelbaum, Forties Screen Style: A Celebration of High Pastiche in Hollywood (New York: St. Martins Press, 1989)
92. Donald Albrecht, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)
93. Scott Eymann, The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 284
94. Fred E. Basten, with Robert Salvatore and Paul A. Kaufman, Max Factor's Hollywood: Glamour, Movies, Make-up (Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1995), 65
95. See also Bud Goode and Betty Mills Goode, "Change of Face in Hollywood," Photoplay, February 1953
96. Peter Baxter, "On the History and Ideology of Film lighting," Screen 16, no. 3: 83-106
97. W. Handley, "History of Motion Picture Lighting," in A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television, ed. Raymond Fielding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 120-24
98. See also Sally A. Stein, "The Rhetoric of the Colorful and the Colorless: American Photography and Material Culture between the Wars" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1991)
99. Ruth Biery, "The New 'Shady Dames' of the Screen," Photoplay, August 1932
100. reprinted in Richard Griffith, ed., The Talkies: Articles and Illustrations from a Great Fan Magazine, 1928-1940 (New York: Dover, 1971), 217-19, 328-29
101. On Harlow, I have used David Stenn, Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow (New York: Doubleday, 1993)
102. Eve Golden: Platinum Girl: the Life and Legends of Jean Harlow (New York: Abbeville, 1991); and especially the Harlow clippings files in AMPAS
103. See Maria Di Battista, Fast-Talking Dames (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001)
104. On the stigma against bleached-blonde hair, see Barnaby Conrad, The Blonde: A Celebration of the Golden Era from Harlow to Monroe (San Francisco: Chronicle, 1999)
105. Joanna Pitman, On Blondes (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), did no research in fashion magazines or beauty manuals; thus she overstated her case for the preeminence of blonde hair in Euro-American culture
106. According to George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic, 1994), male prostitutes in New York bleached their hair blonde to mark their profession
107. For the tradition of blonde showgirls, see John Emile Hirsch, "Glorifying the American Showgirl: A History of Revue Costumes in the United States from 1866 to the Present" (PhD diss., New York University, 1988)
108. John Kobal, People Will Talk (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 169, interview with Anita Loos
109. Eleanor Barnes, Los Angeles Illustrated News, June 30, 1930, in Jean Harlow in the 30's, ed. G. D. Hamman (Hollywood, CA: Filming Today Press, 1996)
110. In G. W. Pabst's Joyless Street (1925), starring Greta Garbo, Anna Nielsen wore a platinum wig, playing a brothel madam, and so did Pola Negri in Three Sinners (1928)
111. On the vogues for red and brown hair, see Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983; repr., Figueroa Press, 2006)
112. On the 1920s, see Lori Landay, Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Artists: The Female Trickster in American Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 67
113. On the continued stigma against bleached hair, see the sources cited in footnote 35, above, and Virginia Maxwell, "Curse of the Platinum Blonde," Street and Smith's Play Magazine, 1932, Harlow file, AMPAS
114. See also Carolyn Van Wyck, "What Color Hair: Brunette Today and Blonde Tomorrow," Photoplay, May 1934, 74
115. James Harvey, Movie Love in the 1950s (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 44, noted that the evil women in noir films often dressed in white
116. Shirley Polykoff, Does She ... Or Doesn't She? And How She Did It (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1975), 32-33
117. See also Time, October 1962
118. Bradley Quinn, Mid-Century Modern: Interiors, Furniture, Design Details (London: Conran Octopus, 2004)
119. Shirley Kennedy, Pucci: A Renaissance in Fashion (New York: Abeville, 1991)
120. Basten, Glorious Technicolor, 102
121. Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
122. Lama Turner, The Lady, the Legend, the Truth (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982), 99
123. Robert Westbrook, "'I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James': American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in World War II," American Quarterly 42 (1990): 600
124. Doug Warren, Betty Grable: The Reluctant Movie Queen (New York: St. Martin's, 1981), 77
125. George F. Custen. Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: Basic, 1997), 186, 189, 199
126. On the Petty Girl, see Reid Steward Austin, Petty: The Classic Pin-Up Art of George Petty (New York: Gramercy, 1998)
127. On the pinup during World War II, see Maria Elena Buszek, Pin-up Grrrls: Feminism: Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006)
128. and Despina Kakoudaki, "Pinup: The American Secret Weapon in World War II," in Porn Studies, ed. Linda Williams (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004)
129. Ben Lyon, obituary, New York Times, March 26, 1979. I have reconstructed Lyon's role in "discovering" Harlow from the clippings in the Harlow file, AMPAS
130. On the resemblance of Monroe to Harlow, see "The 1951 Model Blonde," Collier's, September 8, 1951
131. "The Truth About Me," American Weekly, November 16, 1952
132. New York Telegraph and Sun, August 5, 1952
133. Dick Williams, New York Mirror, January 24, 1953
134. Photoplay, September 1957
135. Hollywood Citizen News, September 30, 1957
136. Celeste Holm, who played a featured role in All About Eve, stated in a 1990 documentary, Marilyn Monroe - Beyond the Myth, that Monroe watched Grable movies during the filming. See also Larry Billman, Betty Grable: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 21
137. John Strasberg, Accidentally on Purpose (New York: Applause, 1996), 97
138. Strasberg repeated his praise for Monroe's "clown" in an interview with me in June 2006. According to Bruno Bernard, "she is a self-taught expert mimic. ... With childlike gusto she can slip into other people's getups and characteristics and caricature her glamorous role models." Bernard, Bernard of Hollywood, 7
139. Biographers have noted Skolsky's influence, which I discussed with Steffi Sidney Slaver, his daughter, in August 2006. On the other hand, most biographies underrate Natasha Lytess, whose influence is amply documented in contemporary fan magazines and noted by Monroe in her conversations with Ralph Roberts. See, for example, Richard Moore, "Monroe and the Wild Life," Modern Screen (November 1953), 81, and Ralph Roberts unpublished memoir on Marilyn, Ralph Roberts mss., in possession of Hap Roberts, Salisbury, NC. Roberts, Marilyn's masseur, was Monroe's best friend during the last several years of her life
140. Curry, Too Much of a Good Thing, 160
141. On the influence of Mae West on Monroe, see W. J. Weatherby Conversations with Marilyn (New York: Paragon, 1992), 148
142. Cecil Beaton, The Face of the World: An International Scrapbook of People and Places (New York: John Day 1959), 183
143. Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, 42
144. On Lili St. Cyr, see Kelly DiNardo, Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique (New York: Back Stage Books, 2007)
145. In Male-Female Comedy Teams in American Vaudeville, 1865-1932 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Press, 1981), 162-63, Shirley Staples traces the dumb blonde to Harriette Lee, who, in 1916, did baby talk and was called a female boob or dumbbell
146. Hedda Hopper, "Our Friend Irma," Chicago Sunday Tribune, May 21, 1950 (syndicated column), Marie Wilson Clippings File, AMPAS
147. According to Gary Cary, Judy Holliday: An Intimate Life Story (New York: Seaview, 1982), 82, Holliday's only "Obeisance" to the "alleged stupidity" of the dumb blonde was her use of the "stereotypical dumb-blond voice - high-pitched, nasal, slightly harsh."
148. On the nightclub act, see Martha Weinman Lear, "Blonde on Blonde," Fame, November 1988 clipping, Judy Holliday file, AMPAS
149. Marilyn Monroe, My Story (New York: Stein and Day 1974), 223
150. Carroll Baker, Baby Doll: An Autobiography (New York: Arbor House, 1983), 145-47
151. My information from the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Chicago Defender comes from their archives on Proquest. Jay Kanter told me about the standing ovation at the Apollo Theater when I interviewed him on October 12, 2007. On Monroe's African American fans, see Joshua Green and James Kotsilibas-Davis, eds., Milton's Marilyn: The Photographs of Milton H. Greene (1994; London: Schirmer Art Books, 2001), 63
152. and George Jacobs, My Life with Frank Sinatra, with William Stadiem (New York: HarperCollins, 1993)
153. Sammy Davis Jr., in Hollywood in a Suitcase (New York: Morrow, 1980), 235, said: "Marilyn became like a sister to me."
154. On the stigma attached to illegitimacy in the 1950s, see Ricki Sollinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (New York: Routledge, 1992)
155. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 129. Baldwin was so upset by Arthur Miller's portrayal of Marilyn in After the Fall as a narcissist and a drug addict that he left the theater in the middle of the play and contacted Ava Gardner, among others, to join him in picketing the production
156. Lee Server, Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing (New York: St. Martins, 2006), 435
157. Ethel Davis to Hedda Hopper, August 12, 1952, Hedda Hopper Papers, Marilyn Monroe File, AMPAS
158. When Spyros Skouras, president of Fox, threatened to destroy her career if she supported Miller, she replied that they would move to Denmark if Skouras carried out his threat. Her statement referred to the Danish people during World War II, who had worn yellow stars, indicating Jewish identity, to protest Hitler's policies against the Jews. Simone Signoret, Nostalgia Isn't What it Used to Be (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 290
159. Marilyn Monroe to Lester Markel, March 29, 1960, Marilyn Monroe Archive, Marilyn Monroe Estate, Los Angeles; Summers, Goddess, 219
160. Susan Strasberg, Marilyn and Me: Sisters, Rivals, Friends (New York: Time Warner, 1992), 170
161. Peter Harry Brown and Patte B. Barham, Marilyn: The Last Take (New York: Dutton, 1992), 249
162. Monroe interview with Richard Merryman, taped version, Donald Spoto taped interviews for his biography of Marilyn, AMPAS. See also Frank Vanderbilt Field, From Right to Left: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983), 302
163. Norman Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story (1967; New York: Signet, 1973), 78
164. Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 59
165. On Monroe and her makeup in Bus Stop, see Green and Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton's Marilyn, 63. Cole Porter, who was homosexual, often hid references to homosexuality in his songs. Thus "That Old Black Magic" probably referred to same-sex attraction
166. Sabrina Barton, "Face Value," in McDonough, ed., All the Available Light, 140
167. For analyses of gender in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, see Maureen Turin, "Gentlemen Consume Blondes," in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1990), 101-111
168. and Lucie Arbuthnot and Gail Seneca," Pre-Test and Test in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," in Ibid., 112-25. My thanks to Jennifer Black, a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, for the Josephine Baker comparison
169. Richard Foster, The Real Bettie Page: The Truth about the Queen of the Pinups (New York: Kingsington, 1997). 55
170. For the details of production on Monroe's films, see Richard Buskin, Blonde Heat: The Sizzling Screen Career of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001)
171. Henry Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything: The Life of Screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 125
172. Diane Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 3
173. See Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)
174. Karen Sacks, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998)
175. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995)
176. and Stephen Sternberg, The Ethnic Myth (Boston: Beacon, 1981), 72
177. See Jonathan Freedman, "Miller, Monroe, and the Remaking of Jewish Masculinity," in Arthur Miller's America: Theatre & Culture, ed. Enoch Brater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2005)
178. Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000)
179. Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 226
180. Joanne Gilbert, Performing Marginality: Humour, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004)
181. Robert G. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)
182. Ann Corio, with Joseph DiMona, This Was Burlesque (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968)
183. Irving Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1967)
184. On masculinity and the 1950s, see Courdileone, Manhood and American Political Culture
185. on World War II and masculinity, see Christina S. Jarvis, The Male Body at War: American Masculinity During World War II (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004)
186. In Hollywood: The Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), 85, 100, anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker realized the strains in the studio system, but she still compared the position of the major producers to that of the Southern plantation owners under antebellum slavery
187. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City NY: Doubleday 1970), 24-27
188. Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 13
189. See "Marilyn and the Hollywood Blondes," Hollywood Studio Magazine, (August 1987), GS
190. "The Other Monroe Girls," Hollywood Magazine (November-December 1988), GS
191. Elsa Maxwell, "Marilyn Confesses to Elsa Maxwell, 'I'll Never Be the Same,'" Modern Screen (July, 1956), 38, 91-94