![]() Monroe not only signed off on the G-rated backstory, but posed for photos changing diapers and reading to children for a story that ran in 1947 under the headline “Pretty Sitter Sittin’ Pretty.” Studio “flacks” advertised her as an orphan who was discovered after babysitting for a talent scout. When 20th Century Fox began publicizing Monroe, with her new name, they erased her complicated family history and active pursuit of a Hollywood acting career and created a more marketable origin story. For executive producer Sam Starbuck, who has spent much of her career covering male subjects alongside male crew members, tackling Monroe’s life and legacy was a rare privilege and opportunity to reveal the real woman behind her sex-object status. Told through a female perspective-and an empathetic, post–#MeToo lens-the docuseries contends that contrary to the way she’s been depicted in the past, Monroe was a shrewd businesswoman who understood the industry’s misogynist rules and played them to her advantage. On Sunday, Greene, as well as Monroe biographer Sarah Churchwell and actors including Mira Sorvino, Amber Tamblyn, and Ellen Burstyn, looked back on Monroe’s life and career for a new CNN docuseries, Reframed: Marilyn Monroe, narrated by Jessica Chastain. Greene has been saying this for about 60 years, since Monroe was her roommate, occasional babysitter to her son, Joshua, and muse to her late photographer husband, Milton. She was a young, vital woman who loved life, loved parties, and had a good time.” But as Monroe’s friend, 92-year-old Amy Greene, tells us, “She was never a victim, sweetheart. In her later years, she so overpainted her mouth that it looked like a bloody smear.Sixty years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, the blond bombshell is still remembered as a tragic figure-a passive victim of a patriarchal Hollywood. OK, she was a novelist, but she seemed like an actress. Other memorable screen lips of the moment: Julia Roberts and Kim Basinger. The lewd charade of her mouth, painted with a high false lip line, screamed “cheap” as surely as black fishnet stockings and a dangling cigarette. Monroe’s lips might have suggested availability, but it was of a vulnerable sort, not hard or threatening like the scorcher Gloria Grahame, who often played loose women in the 1940s and ‘50s. Just the sight of them made strong men quiver. There was nothing unclear about the carnal signal that her ample lips presented. Barrymore’s counterpart in an earlier era might have been the “It” girl, Clara Bow, with her bee-stung, kewpie-doll lips, which were caricatured in the pen-and-ink form of Betty Boop.īut the most famous movie lips, which always seemed on the verge of trembling, belonged to Marilyn Monroe. Drew Barrymore’s American version of the Paris pout is a vivid example. Today, when movie lips send a mixed signal, it’s likely to be a blend of the tart and the cutie-pie. My nominee for the best-ever lips is Ingrid Bergman, whose plump, soft-cushioned mouth, which bore only the faintest trace of lipstick, made her appear both wholesome and erotic, a powerful and sometimes confusing combination. Hollywood has offered the world decades of memorable lips. The Paris pout can be seen to great advantage on the young Bardot or, more recently, Isabelle Adjani. The fullest lips seem to belong to French women. A few seasons ago, Barbara Hershey had collagen injected into her lips for her role in “Beaches.” She looked great, but then again, when the collagen disappeared and her lips returned to normal, she still looked great. In “The First Wives Club,” Goldie Hawn’s character pursued that solution and wound up looking wonderfully preposterous. ![]() Aging lips have made collagen a popular, if expensive and slightly desperate, procedure. They’ve had a lifetime of watching giant lips on movie screens, offering lessons in kissing technique. I, like most everyone else, was launching a never-ending pursuit.Īs the baby boomers march along, their lips are wrinkling a bit and narrowing. Very few among us, after a first kiss, think: Well, now that I’ve done that, I don’t have to do it again. I can no longer recall her name, but I do remember the sweet fullness of her lips and a heady sensation that made me aware that I was entering the adult world. Holding hands wasn’t enough, and rubbing noses held little appeal.Ī guileless smooch was the most natural act. As naive as we both were (we’re talking the suburbs of the Midwest in the early ‘50s), we still knew just what to do. I may have conveniently forgotten a few abortive lunges, but I certainly recall the first time a girl kissed back. And who could blame them? Everybody remembers their first kiss. The lovers banter about lips for the rest of the scene. ![]() ![]() ![]() Just before Romeo kisses Juliet for the first time, he says, “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand. ![]()
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