Marilyn: The Movie Star Who Changed The World | Preview (Channel 5)

Marilyn Monroe is the golden girl of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Although she featured in only around 30 films in her short life, her star power is as great as ever, and yet she is still frequently undervalued, just as she was in life.

With rarely seen video and audio interviews with Marilyn herself, this programme reassesses the life and career of Marilyn Monroe to reveal how she was systematically underestimated by sexist studio bosses who refused to recognise the intelligence and creative contribution of this tragic trailblazer.

We hear from those who knew Marilyn intimately: her Oscar-winning dance partner George Chakiris from Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend describes her diligence and attention to detail on set. Edie and Meta Shaw, daughters of Sam Shaw, describe the long hot night on Broadway when their father photographed her in The Seven Year Itch, producing one of the most iconic shots in movie history.

Finally, John Strasberg of The Actors Studio in New York remembers how Marilyn came to live with his family when he was a boy and relates his impressions of her as a vivacious, effective woman.

Her extraordinary box office appeal resulted in a string of hits in the 50. But Marilyn became increasingly frustrated at being typecast as the “dumb blonde” in film after film. Rejecting a role in The Girl in Pink Tights for which her co-star Frank Sinatra was due to be paid three times her salary, she rebelled and left to join the prestigious Actors’ Studio, ambitious to be taken seriously as an actress.

She battled to quit her studio contract and started her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, nominating herself President. The studio’s response was to laugh at her effrontery in thinking she was capable.

Her last public appearance was at Madison Square Gardens in May 1962 where she sang a famously seductive version of Happy Birthday Mr President to her alleged lover, JFK. Recorded just weeks before her death, her singing is remarkable both for her fantastic comic timing and her evident slide into drug and alcohol abuse.

Sadly, under the pressures of three failed marriages and multiple miscarriages, her alcohol and drug use spiralled, leading to her early death at the age of 36.

Marilyn: The Movie Star Who Changed the World airs Friday 23rd August on Channel 5.