BOOK REVIEW BY DAVID MARSHALL

There’s an upside and a downside to these online groups. The upside is that after you’ve been around for a while, you amass a huge collection of Marilyn photos. So what could possibly be the downside to that? The downside comes when you realize that you now have the majority of photos that will appear in any MM photo book you pick up. And while that can be weighed against the pleasure one gets from holding a book and leisurely thumbing through the pages as opposed to sitting at a computer and clicking to the next picture, it does dampen the thrill you used to feel when coming across a MM book you didn’t already own. You knew that you’d be treated to a wide plethora of brand new Marilyn photos and would spend days and days looking through them one by one, studying, memorizing.

 That would be the one thing I have against Jock Carroll’s book on the many pictures he took of Marilyn as her career was just about to take off into the stratosphere. It’s no fault of Mr. Carroll’s of course. But I have to admit that when I looked through the book the first time, there was the whispered disappointment of “Oh, I’ve seen that one. That one too.” But the upside is when you have a book there is always something new—and usually in the section that, if you are like me, I often overlook- yeah, the Words.

 How long did you own Mailer’s “Marilyn” before you actually read what he had to say? Or how about “The Complete Last Sitting”? Did it take you months and months to turn to the front of the book and see what Mr. Stern had to say for himself? I know that the temptation to just look at the pictures and overlook the actual text is strong. But I suggest that you pull those coffee table books down off the shelf, (or up off the coffee table), and spend sometime reading what they say. Some of it can only be categorizes as “God Awful” such as “The Unseen Archives”, (GREAT book, stupid and inaccurate text). Sometimes the text is nearly as fascinating as the photos, like “Milton’s Marilyn” or “Falling For Marilyn”.

 Now granted, the actual text to this book is only 17 pages, followed by about 60 pages of photos. But without the words, without Carroll’s memories of the just then about to become a major star Marilyn, you’d be sitting with a book that you could just as easily do without as you likely already have all of those pictures. For by sitting down and taking the time to read those seventeen pages, you can her Marilyn talking about her makeup techniques (circa 1952), her makeup man Whitey, her childhood and her thoughts on one Mr. Joe DiMaggio. You’ll get to read about her at Niagara Falls, the dreams of maybe becoming a recognized actress, read all the small conversations and snippets of trivia you know you would give just about anything to have herd and witnessed in person.

 Seventeen pages isn’t all that much. But when it comes to this point where you’ve read just about every book out there on the woman, those seventeen pages of new information and memories of yet another person who knew Marilyn, seventeen pages can be a priceless treasure.

Nice full page black and white photos. Good quality paper. Seventeen pages of Memory. Sounds worth it to me!