“Sadly, while she attempted to remain in the present, her past haunted her almost as much as her future frightened her,” J. Randy Taraborrelli noted in the beginning of his new biography “The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe.”
Taraborrelli paints a vivid picture of Monroe’s life, including many details and events that have never before been reported on the glamorous star’s upbringings and secret ongoing battle for her mental wellness.
As Taraborrelli describes in the preface, much of the information expressed within this biography has recently been made known through a newly released archive of diaries, poems and letters in the celebrity’s handwriting, but has never before been revealed.
Also, interviews from those that previously refused to reveal Monroe’s secrets yielded new information on her ongoing battle against the receiving the same fate of both her mother and her grandmother, who were committed to insane asylums.
Many of those who were interviewed were older. Although the previously wanted to protect Monroe’s privacy, they felt that they could not let Monroe’s secrets die with them.
Taraborrelli’s biography encompasses the message that, behind Monroe’s glamour and impeccable beauty, there was a sad story and a person very different than who everyone thought her to be.
“The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe” is a heart-wrenching novel that has the ability to draw tears to the reader’s eyes because of the unfortunate events within Monroe’s life that made her who she became. Taraborrelli writes in a very descriptive manner, painting the scene and action perfectly as to evoke strong heartache and distress for the seemingly perfect Hollywood figure.
Taraborrelli’s account of Monroe’s childhood of relentless abandonment cuts straight to the soul. The young Marilyn Monroe, formerly Norma Jeane, was a “helpless infant who had entered this world without any form of welcome,” according to Taraborrelli. “There was no freshly furnished nursery awaiting her, no tiny wardrobe, and in fact, no one on earth whose future plans included her. She spent the first few days of her life being sustained, not nurtured. She was a burden, one that needed to be unloaded.”
At one point in young Norma Jeane’s life, her grandmother came to visit her in a foster home. Monroe’s foster-mother, Ida Bolender, was returning from the kitchen with a glass of water for her guest, she found the grandmother trying to smother the baby Norma Jeane with a pillow. This episode was one of many leading to her grandmother’s committal to an insane asylum for paranoia issues and dangerous mood swings.
Norma Jeane grew up as a lost, vulnerable soul that had never been able to truly claim one family or one home.
She was abandoned time and time again with no defense but to sit in grievance and weep. Her journey was a long and difficult one, which never could reach a stage of peace.
Taraborrelli’s “The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe” seems too farfetched to be true and continuously calls for the reader to revisit the fact that the novel is a true-to-life biography. The novel creates an understanding for the real woman behind the legendary Marilyn Monroe.
