Marilyn Monroe's Career - Book Report/Review Example

No one can be sure if it was a suicide or an accidental drug overdose. The story of how her life ended so sadly and how she rose to the top of the fame game so quickly is an amazing one. It is told very impressively by the author J. Randy Taraborelli, who knows all the details. The story of how Marilyn rose from model to superstar is one that every child should be told. It is a narrative which is at once captivating and saddening. It has glamour, glitz, and an unforgettable character at its heart.

Many of the lessons it has to teach about Hollywood are lessons which are just as important today. Marliyn did not grow up in a glamorous family. She did not come from privilege and she was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. One of the reasons she became so popular and was so loved because she came from nowhere. Her story is very similar to Cinderella’s. She was given nothing, but still managed to make something of herself through hard work and perseverance. This is the causal issue that is most discussed about her life: she felt so alone and this caused her to make herself into someone who everyone would love.

This was a sad truth: he own unhappiness led only to more unhappiness. Monroe spent many of her earliest days in an orphanage which she said was a horrible experience. Others who remember her there, say it wasn’t so bad. . As a child, she felt cast off, and this caused her to feel the need to cling to those around her who seemed better or more powerful. It was a most unfortunate way of leading a life, and was a method which would not cause her to have success in the end. The writing was on the wall from the beginning.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about these terrible days in her childhood is the way Marilyn described how she would pass the time. She would fall back into her fantasy world, and now her dreams were about being picked from the lot of other children as something special. “I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I pass,” she would recall. “I dreamed of walking very proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone—men and women—and overhearing words of praise.

I made up the praises and repeated them aloud as if someone else were saying them.” (45) The techniques that young Marilyn used to cope with the unpleasant circumstances of her early life had truly amazing effects. Her fantasizing and her ability to build up and imagine a world around her and the desire of those around her would serve her very well as a movie star when she got her first films in the 1950s. In the beginning, no one thought much of her. They saw she was insecure and vulnerable.

They saw she was lacking in confidence. These were not qualities which the studios were looking for at the time. They wanted bold and proud women. But upon a second glance, the studios began to see that Marilyn had a certain quality which caused people to be drawn to her. This is the star quality that would make her truly famous and one of America’s iconic sex symbols. This is attested to by those who knew when she was just getting started