Hello again, Norma Jean.
In the years since her 1962 death from a drug overdose, the legend of the woman who became a pop-culture icon as Marilyn Monroe has only intensified. One piece of proof is Joyce Carol Oates’ best seller “Blonde,” a partially fictionalized account of events in the life of Norma Jean Baker, whose bombshell Monroe image largely cloaked deep-rooted troubles. That novel becomes a CBS miniseries Sunday and Wednesday (8 p.m. each night), with former “Relativity” co-star Poppy Montgomery in the central role.
Oates hedged her bets (and skirted possible legal messes) in her version of the Baker-Monroe story by her references to two of the star’s three husbands, baseball hero Joe DiMaggio and “Death of a Salesman” author Arthur Miller. “Blonde” names them only as “The Ex-Athlete” (played in the drama by “Falcone” alumnus Titus Welliver) and “The Playwright” (Griffin Dunne).
Also in the cast are Patricia Richardson (“Home Improvement”) and Ann-Margret — respectively cast as Norma Jean’s problematic mother and well-intentioned grandmother — as well as Kirstie Alley as her adoptive mother, Eric Bogosian and Wallace Shawn as the photographer and the agent who first gave her fame, and Patrick Dempsey as Charlie Chaplin’s son Cass. Joyce Chopra (“Smooth Talk”) directed the project, which was adapted for television by Joyce Eliason (“The Last Don”).
“It was so overwhelming, I almost didn’t do it,” Montgomery recalls of the prospect of playing Marilyn Monroe. “I’d been offered a TV series at the same time, and as much as I wanted to do ‘Blonde,’ I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to pull it off or do her justice. I’ve been a fan of hers since I was a child. I had pictures of her and read every biography of her, so this was really daunting to me.”
Going into “Blonde” with such knowledge of Monroe reduced the amount of research Montgomery had to do: “I knew her movies well, but I still referred to a lot of material while we were shooting, primarily the (Oates) book. It became my bible. There were some scenes from her films I had to duplicate, so I watched those over and over. Still, even with the ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ number (from ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’), we decided not to make it exact. I had to bring something of myself to it to make it real. Otherwise, it would have been just another cartoonish imitation.”
There certainly have been many of those over the years, and Montgomery acknowledges that they make Monroe “more of a mythical figure” than someone who actually existed. “I made up my mind that I was not going to play Marilyn as the world knows her, a breathy, high-voiced baby doll. I wanted to do it the same way Joyce Carol Oates approached her, as the intelligent and ambitious woman she was. You don’t get to be the biggest movie star in the world, especially coming from where she did, without (those qualities).”
American Movie Classics premieres a documentary about Monroe’s last days (and her never-finished film “Something’s Got to Give”) on June 1, so the fascination with her continues. However, Montgomery reflects, “It’s unfortunate that the focus remains on the strange circumstances of her death and things like the FBI’s interest in her, as opposed to the fact that she was a phenomenal talent who was so ahead of her time. That is now beginning to be recognized, and I think ‘Blonde’ is the first book and miniseries about things other than the perpetuation of the myth that was Marilyn Monroe.”
