“My Week with Marilyn,” celebrated for its vibrant lead performance by Michelle Williams as the iconic Monroe, is currently under the microscope for not telling the whole truth.

It isn’t the first time a film with Oscar hopes has been questioned by the media. The 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” got the cold shoulder for scrubbing the lead character’s less magnanimous side. Some argued John Nash, the inspiration behind Russell Crowe’s character, was both anti-semitic and a lousy father, charges Nash denied. The chatter threatened to derail the film’s Oscar chances, but it ended up winning multiple gold statuettes, including the coveted Best Picture award.

Some films which could use a bit of scrutiny, though, often get little or none.

Last year’s “Fair Game” played fast and loose with reality regarding the Valerie Plame affair, barely mentioning the person behind the leak of the CIA agent’s identity. The film ended up undeserving of awards for a very basic reason – it wasn’t compelling. But few critics raised a ruckus over how the film told only one side of a rather complex story.

But perhaps the most egregious recent examples of films fudging the facts came from the documentary genre. Both “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Fahrenheit 9/11″ threw some spurious charges around, and both ended up winning the Best Documentary Oscar. In the case of the former film, having a Democratic politician leading the way clearly made it unlikely that the press fact checkers would break a sweat over its charges.

And the press routinely avoids giving Moore’s films the thorough debunking they deserve.

So remember as the conversation regarding “Marilyn” and reality rears its ugly head this week that the truth seekers don’t embrace a level playing field.

BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS:

The box office slump hit pretty hard over the holiday weekend. While retail sales everywhere else skyrocketed to record numbers, Hollywood took a 12% hit when compared to this time last year. It’s going to be difficult to predict how some of these films ultimately do. Now that we’re in the holiday season, something like “Hugo” that looks like a bust could have surprising legs straight through to Christmas and actually end up doing pretty well.

The upcoming competition doesn’t look overwhelming, especially for films aimed at kids. “Hugo,” “The Muppets,” and  ”Arthur Christmas” have the field pretty much to themselves until December 16 when the third “Alvin and the Chipmunks” opens.

1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1: $62.3M — Keeping pretty close pace with its predecessor. With a $110M budget and a total take of $221M in just 10 days, the break-even is probably close to $300M, which is what “Eclipse” did domestically. Another $400M poured in from overseas. These movies are money-making machines.

2. The Muppets: $42.2M — Word of mouth almost assures this will have legs through Christmas. Everyone seems to love it.

3. Happy Feet Two: $18.4M — With a total take of $44M over 10 days, this is a genuine flop. Again, I think the politics of the previous entry turned off a lot of parents. People enjoyed “Happy Feet;” I know I did, but the liberal eco-messaging diminished the fun and left a bad taste. Especially off-putting is how that messaging was aimed at children. Hollywood used to teach universal values to our kids. Honesty, bravery, and loyalty were the themes of the day. Now it’s divisive issues like global warming and gay marriage. Hollywood overstepped on this one and 600 people lost their jobs.

4. Arthur Christmas $17M: — This has to be a disappointment. Because it’s the only offering this season with “Christmas” in the title, that might help as the season rolls on, but the overall concept seemed tired to me. How many movies are out there that promise to show us how Santa is able to deliver all those toys in just one night? Hollywood has to remember that home video is a reality. They might not have been born when it was released, but everyone over the age of eight has already seen “The Santa Clause.”

5. Hugo: $15.4M — Scorsese’s 3D entry had a terrific per screen take of $12,000, but that’s a wee bit less than the “Muppets” and far less than “Breaking Dawn” in its second week. There’s talk that the epic will expand closer to Christmas, but by then it will have to compete with Spielberg’s “Tintin.” Reportedly, the film cost well over $100M to produce.

6. Jack and Jill: $14.1M — This is definitely looking like a rare disappointment from Sandler.

9. Tower Heist $10.2M — Done.

10. The Descendents: $9.2M — George Clooney’s Oscar bait expanded to 433 screens and did a killer $21.4K per screen.  Expansion imminent. Clooney could use a hit. His last piece of Oscar-bait, “The Ides of March,” has yet to break $40M.

11. J. Edgar: $6.7M — Three weeks in release and $28.8M makes this (along with “Happy Feet Two”) one of the biggest disappointments of the season.  The talk about Hoover’s sexuality likely turned a lot of people off. The left is as obsessed with sexuality as they are race. The rest of us just don’t care and therefore had no desire to get pulled into what amounts to a stupid debate.

13. My Week With Marilyn: $ 2.1M – Weinstein’s Oscar-bait did a pretty fair $8500 per on 244 screens.

In related news…

INTERSTING LOOK AT THE COLLAPSE OF DVD SALES:

Iin 2007, six titles sold over 10 million DVD units. In 2008, only “The Dark Knight” did. In 2009, only “Twilight” did. In 2010, “Avatar” barely broke 10 million. As of now, with only 5 weeks to go, 2011 is looking pretty dismal. Some of that is made up in Blu-rays, but not enough to even recreate the numbers from 2007.

The recession didn’t hit until 2008, but while the economy has gotten a little better over the last three years, according to these numbers, DVD sales haven’t.  Also, take another look at this weekend’s box office in comparison to other retail sales. While the rest of retail America enjoyed record sales over Thanksgiving, Hollywood saw a 12% drop.

Hollywood can crybaby about Redbox and Netflix Streaming and piracy all they want, and those are factors in these numbers, but it’s also a fact that movies simply aren’t as good as they used to be and this is starting to reflect in every objective measurement available.

If you make movies people want to see, people will see them and they will buy them. It’s really that simple.

THE 5 BEST MARILYN MONROE PERFORMANCES

In all the hoopla and drama that surrounds Monroe, something that’s easily forgotten is just how good of an actress she was in both comedic and dramatic roles. And if you think about it, she had a much higher bar than most actors. She had to make you forget she was Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe is truly amazing in “The Misfits,” in what would both her and Clark Gable’s final film. Monty Clift would only make three more films and die a few years later in 1966. The three of them all seem so tired, so drained of life. John Huston’s existential character study would be perfectly fine without all the true-life subtext, but with it you have one of Hollywood’s most fitting and poignant farewells — right up there with John Wayne’s goodbye in “The Shootist.”

5 ENTERTAINING DOCUMENTARIES RECENTLY RELEASED ON NETFLIX INSTANT

I agree that “Buck” is terrific and well worth your time. It’s rare that Hollywood spends any time in this part of the country and the film itself, which has some pretty substantial themes, introduces you to people usually stereotyped and demeaned by our Cinematic Overlords.

I also have to agree that Tony and Ridley Scott’s “Life In a Day” is a total bore. The concept is interesting: take footage filmed on the same day by thousands of people all around the world and turn it into a patch quilt look at the world. The result, unfortunately, proves that even documentaries require a three-act structure. With no narrative, “Life In a Day” is like watching  someone flip channels through various security cameras.

Let me recommend a few docs that aren’t on this particular list:

Winnebago Man — People fascinate me, especially everyday people. I had never heard of Jack Rebney before seeing this documentary, but I guess he became some sort of Internet sensation after 20 year-old video of him swearing between takes during the filming of an industrial film was released on YouTube. The director, Ben Steinbauer, decided to track Rebney down, and while there’s nothing profound to be learned here and the ending works a little too hard to be uplifting, the film does (unintentionally) do something fascinating.

Have you ever thought back a decade or two and wondered what might have happened to someone you once knew? Not a family member or someone famous, but some guy you worked with for a few years or the nice lady who once lived next door. “Winnebago Man” isn’t the movie it poses as — a look at how the Internet can create celebrity. It’s actually a better movie than that, a movie that traces the life of an ordinary man to its conclusion.

Candyman: The David Klein Story — Klein tells the story of how he invented Jelly Belly and how it was stolen from him, costing him millions upon millions. For whatever reason Weird Al Yankovic shows up, but somehow it all works. Director Costa Botes wisely uses the doc to explore the character of Klein and doesn’t take sides in the legal disputes. What was most bizarre for me was that Klein lives and works only a few blocks from where I did in Los Angeles. There was my old neighborhood… in a movie!

H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer — Truth is always stranger than fiction and usually more exciting and interesting.

ANALYST WARNS: PAY TV WILL FADE AS YOUNG VIEWERS LOOK FOR CHEAPER ALTERNATIVES

I love this, and it’s a big deal:

It’s a big deal when an analyst as respected as Credit Suisse’s Stefan Anninger slashes his  pay TV subscription forecast for 2012 to a 200,000 loss from a 250,000 gain, which is what he did this morning. But the rationale behind his decision is even more noteworthy: He cites a Credit Suisse-commissioned survey that found evidence of a youthful revolt against the pricey video packages. Lots of young adults aren’t cutting the cord; they never subscribe in the first place.  … These young adults and their children will have grown up “in a world in which the Internet (at least from a technological perspective) was capable of delivering a reasonably satisfying video experience” for free, or a lot less than a cable or satellite TV subscription.

So many lousy channels are propped up by these pricy packages. How else can junk nobody watches like OWN, LOGO, CNN, MSNBC, and a hundred others survive?

I cannot wait to see the day when these also-rans are forced to make it on their own, and I am counting the days to when the contract on my package ends.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Best laid plans, right? Thanksgiving weekend represented the first stretch of time off that didn’t involve a move across the country I’d have in a long time, and of course that’s when the flu decided to strike. What a bummer. We had all kind of plans including a punch list of stuff that needed doing around the house. Unfortunately, a three-day Nyquil coma made all that impossible. Yesterday morning I woke up at least feeling human and was able to enjoy a few episodes of my new “Wild Wild West” DVD collection.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINK-TACULAR

THE RETURN OF CAMERON CROWE

FIVE REASONS ‘DRIVE’ WON’T DO WELL AT THE OSCARS

WHY WE CAN’T WAIT FOR SEASON 2 OF ‘GAME OF THRONES‘

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF U2′S ‘ACHTUNG BABY‘

SECRET BEHIND MARILYN MONROE’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT

FIRST IMAGES FROM RIDLEY SCOTT’S ‘PROMETHEUS‘

FIRST POSTER FOR ‘MEN IN BLACK 3′

R.I.P. ANNE MCCAFFREY, AUTHOR OF ‘DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN‘

CHRISTIAN BALE CONFIRMS HE’S DONE WITH BATMAN

PRODUCER GALE ANNE HURD DEVELOPING AREA 51 SERIES

THOSE ‘JERSEY SHORE’ X-MAS ORNAMENTS ARE FINALLY HERE

REMAKE OF ‘CHOPPING MALL’ BEING PLANNED

BIGGEST CELEBRITY HAIR OF THE 80S

POSTER FOR ANGELINA JOLIE’S IN THE ‘LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY‘

WILL THE ‘LORD OF THE RINGS’ TRILOGY GET A 3D RE-RELEASE ONE DAY?

TOP 10 CRAFT CONTRIBUTIONS TO MARTIN SCORSESE FILMS

A LOOK AT RED LETTER MEDIA, CREATORS OF THOSE EXTENSIVE ‘STAR WARS’ REVIEWS

10 DELIGHTFULLY HAMMY VILLAIN PERFORMANCES…

…AND 10 MORE!

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LOCATING FAMOUS HUMANS IN THE MUPPET MOVIES

‘THE WALKING DEAD’ SEASON 2 MIDSEASON FINALE REVIEW

A BAND IN INDIANA IS WRITING ORIGINAL SONGS FOR EVERY ‘STAR TREK’ EPISODE!

COOL VIDEO: ‘ALIENS’… ON ICE!!

‘WAR HORSE’ DAZZLES ON SCREEN: SPIELBERG SCHMALTZY AND SOARING

COOL INFOGRAPHIC: EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT PRODUCT PLACEMENT

TOP 10 BIZARRE KUNG-FU FILMS

REGIS PHILBIN HOPES TO RETURN TO TV WITH PRIMETIME TALENT SHOW

10 FILMS WE CAN BARELY BELIEVE ARE REAL

20 FACTS ABOUT ‘INCEPTION‘

10 VIDEO GAMES THAT ARE INCREDIBLY WELL-WRITTEN

10 YEARS LATER: A LOOK BACK AT ‘THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS‘

A LOOK AT ‘THE SIMPSONS” FAILED PRIMETIME CARTOON COMPETITORS

10 BEST FAKE TRAILERS

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29

TCM:

2:00 AM EST:  Captain Blood (1935) –  After being unjustly sentenced to prison, a doctor escapes and becomes a notorious pirate. Dir: Michael Curtiz Cast:  Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill. BW-119 mins, TV-G, CC.

One of the top five greatest adventure films ever made. Storytelling at its finest. This made Flynn an overnight star and you’ll see why within the first 15 minutes. This was also the first of eight films Flynn and the luminous Olivia de Havilland would star in together. Later they would pair up for such classics as “Charge of the Light Brigade,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,” “Dodge City,” and “They Dies With Their Boots On.”

Other than Fred and Ginger, Errol and Olivia are my favorite on-screen couple. Their movies captured so well what was happening behind the scenes. He was desperately in love with her but she never gave in to him. Flynn was a notorious womanizer but when you read his memoirs, the superb “My Wicked, Wicked Ways,” you get the sense that she was the only woman he truly loved.

Giants.

This might sound corny, but there are certain films that plaster the smile of a happy idiot on my face from beginning to end, and anything with these two does exactly that. They work like a drug. They mainline joy.

--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints to jnolte@breitbart.com

–CHARTER SOLVES THE PROBLEM! –

A extremely nice and patient tech professional from Charter spent the day with me and my Internets yesterday and refused to leave until the problems were solved. It took some doing, a few routers, phone calls and a little head-scratching — but he got it and now he’s my hero.

My Streaming streams my Internet internets. That’s all I wanted — you know, what I paid for and what I was promised. Only took five weeks, 922 phone calls and four service visits, but maybe my expectations were too high.

I was so thrilled after it was all working correctly that I forgot I wasn’t in California and tried to kiss the Charter guy on the mouth before he left.

In all seriousness, if every cable and Internet company in America cloned this man, the world would be a much better place.

OH NOES!: FOX KICKS OFF “THE GREAT FREE TV WEB PULLBACK OF 2010″

In an effort to keep the cable companies happy that pay the networks tons of cash, Fox will now wait eight whole days before making its shows available online. ABC will soon follow.

Well, whoop-de-freakin’-doo.  

The future is now and an eight day delay before “The Simpsons” hits Hulu or 28 days before “The Green Hornet” hits Redbox can’t stop the future.

Cable companies had better get into the Internet business if they want to be around in five years. We are becoming a society that wants to watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it. Appointment television is dead. Hell, the DVR is probably on the way out the door.

STREAMING is the new entertainment god. Kneel before it or die on your outdated feet.

KEVIN COSTNER AND BILL PAXTON TO PLAY HATFIELD AND MCCOY

Not only is this a superb piece of casting but if done right, this could be a terrific miniseries. A few years ago I read a serious historical examination of this famous feud (can’t remember the name of the book), and found it absolutely fascinating. The human drama is much more interesting than the gunplay and the cartoonish realizations we’re all used to. The way this sad but true story unfolds towards inevitable tragedy is truly gripping stuff.

The History Channel is producing. Let’s hope it doesn’t get shifted to Reelz after the fascist Kennedy family complains about the guns, or something.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Last night I gutted a bathroom. It was better than TV — and nothing before has ever been better than TV.

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TODAY’S QUICK HITS

“DAUGHTERS OF SEX AND THE CITY” IN DEVELOPMENT

NETFLIX MARCH TOWARDS WORLD DOMINATION CONTINUES

I DON’T WEAR ABERCROMBIE & FITCH. WHERE’S MY CHECK?

50 MOST ENTERTAINING CRAPPY MOVIES OF ALL-TIME

FINALLY:  A MOVIE ABOUT THE INVENTION OF THE VIBRATOR

THIS IS NEWS? MOST OF MY REJECTION LETTERS READ LIKE THIS

FOUR-OUT-OF-FIVE STAR ‘CONAN THE BARBARIAN 3D’ REVIEW

I HAD BEEN MEANING TO TALK TO HER ABOUT HIS

YES. THIS IS NEWS.

A HOMELESS BURT REYNOLDS?

BRUCE DERN STILL LOOKS EVERY INCH THE BADASS

“PAWN STARS” #1 IN KEY DEMO

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CLASSIC PICK FOR THURSDAY AUGUST 18, 2011

FMC:

4:00 pm EST: RIVER OF NO RETURN (1954) — During the California gold rush, a widower (Mitchum) and his 10 year old son (Rettig) encounter a saloon singer (Monroe) wth a gold claim. Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum, Tommy Rettig, Rory Calhoun, Murvyn Vye. Director: Otto Preminger

Not one of Marilyn Monroe’s most famous films but still one of her best, thanks mainly to her chemistry with the underrated Mitchum.

Good drama, good action, good performances (especially by the two leads), excellent photography, and very well-paced. Director Otto Preminger might have been a counter-intuitive choice to direct what was sold as a big, color widescreen action picture, but his specialty was always human drama and relationships, which is what you remember after the credits roll.   

And Marilyn does look awfully sexy in wet clothes. Let’s not forget that.

–Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

Here's a perfect illustration of the iconography of freedom. Marilyn Monroe displays a picture of Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, in a sleek convertible with the open road beckoning.

Automobiles represent freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The brilliant, exhilirating and touching American Grafitti, 1973, is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Almost every single scene takes place in a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accomodate the automobile. And the movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.

Contrast cars with trains.

Trains and subways are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state run system that turns  the citizen into a small cog manipulated by unmotivated, inefficient government bureaucrats.

That’s why Progressives-Liberals-Leftists are obsessed with high-speeed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to statists who want to regulate/control diet, education, light bulbs, health care, your very geography.

Need I mention that Nazis just adored trains AKA cattle cars. And hey, the Italians boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergence of philosophy between post-modern liberalism and iron-fist facism. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the Nazi party’s formal title was The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Anyhoo.

Hollywood produced great stars who proudly posed with their autos, symbols of glamour, affluence, and freedom.

Silent film comedienne Mabel Normand shows off her custom built Mercer Runabout 22-72, equipped with fold-a-way makeup kit and vanity table. The car was a gift from Mabel's boyfriend, producer Mack Sennett, 1920. The night before their wedding Mabel discovered Mack in bed with actress Mae Busch. The wedding was cancelled. Mabel boozed, became addicted to cocaine and was involved in several high-profile Hollywood scandals. Her brilliant career tanked and she died at the age of 37.

Rudolph Valentino loved cars and spent hours tinkering with engines. He owned several very expensive custom built vehicles. Rudy proudly displays his Isotta-Franschini limousine, built to his exacting specifications, 1923. I'm reading Evelyn Zumaya's new, groundbreaking biography, “Affairs Valentino.” Along with details of Rudy's love of the automobile—and his horrendous driving—I'm gaining a whole new perspective on this remarkable figure of motion picture history.

Rita Hayworth, b. Margarita Carmen Cansino, presents a distinctly unglamorous but fetching vision of the girl next door as she poses with her 1941 Lincoln Continental. When Hayworth first came to Hollywood she was painfully shy, could not look strangers in the eye and barely spoke above a whisper. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons confidently predicted that Hayworth would never make it in the movies.

Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn was expelled from school for fighting and seducing a school laundress. Flynn loved America, became a citizen and attempted to enlist at the start of World War II. An enlarged heart, malaria, reliance on morphine for chronic back pain, and venereal disease firmly classified him as 4-F. Known for his swashbuckler image and party-hard lifestyle, Flynn looks ready to cruise Sunset Strip in his seriously cool Auburn Speedster.

Robert Montgomery was born to privilege, but his father committed suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge leaving the family penniless. Montgomery was, no doubt, relieved to be able to afford this Cadillac Sport-Phaeton. An active Republican Montgomery was outspoken against Communist influence in Hollywood.

Jimmy Stewart was best when playing the everyman American. His 1938 Plymouth reflects this unpretentious personae. Stewart flew as a command pilot in a B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. Back in civilian life, he refused to publicize his heroic war record in order to garner publicity.

Director Josef von Sternberg, b. Jonas Sternberg, gave Marlene Dietrich this 1931 forest green Rolls Royce as a gift. Her chauffer, Briggs—perfect name—carried a set of revolvers to protect his famous employer. When Dietrich traveled to Europe, she sent her Rolls and Briggs in advance. David Niven notes in his excellent autobiography, “The Moon's a Balloon” that Dietrich supplied Briggs with a mink trimmed uniform, which, I suppose, qualifies Briggs as Hollywood's first metrosexual chauffer-bodyguard.

No stranger to the perils of drug abuse herself, Taylor knew firsthand Jackson could indeed turn his life around.  After her own rehab stint made headlines in the early 1980s, Taylor was in a unique position to speak out to celebrities who abuse drugs to cope with fame and its pitfalls.  While Jackson eventually passed away, allegedly from a powerful prescription drug, there is something to be learned from the lives of both the King of Pop and Hollywood’s golden girl.

Even when she struggled with health problems, weight issues, and alcohol, the public maintained its fond fascination for Taylor, and she emerged from those challenges fully supported.  Then, she became one of the most active humanitarians in show business; utilizing her stardom to raise funds for AIDS research throughout the 1980s, which continued for several decades until her passing.  Unfortunately, the feel-good chapter at the end of Taylor’s story – one marked by altruism and charity – is uncommon for Hollywood’s brightest stars, who often fade as fast as they shine.

Many celebrities are unable to turn their lives around.  From Lindsay Lohan to Charlie Sheen, the tabloids are constantly filled with headlines detailing famous figures and their fall from grace.  Earlier this month, I chronicled the life of Anna Nicole Smith, whose rags-to-riches story was so tragic that theater writers created a European opera based on her life.  The native Texan – whose beauty was compared to Marilyn Monroe’s – became a Playboy cover girl, but her rise to celebrity status spun out of control.  She fell prey to pressures of the public eye.  When she married a Texas businessman, it appeared to be a phony grab for money.  She initiated a lawsuit in an attempt to secure a piece of his estate before he even died.  Thus, the final years of Smith’s life were marked by litigation and a continuous downward spiral.  Eventually her pursuit of fame and glamour came to a sudden and tragic end in 2007 when she overdosed on drugs in a Florida hotel room.

The highs and lows experienced by celebrities in the public eye like Taylor, Jackson, and Smith have weaved their way into pop culture’s main frame. Elizabeth Taylor’s passing provides us the opportunity to reflect on the perils of fame.  While the plights of celebrities have become a preoccupation and hobby for many people, it is apparent that the lenses under which these stars live result in more tragic endings than fairytale ones.

Beginning with Ms. Monroe, there really are no classic, “dumb blondes” in Europe.

“Dumb blonde” is an exclusively American label.

However, no “dumb blonde” has ever or will ever receive so much attention from world renowned intellectuals, male and female, as Marilyn Monroe.

Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee and Paula Strasberg and, of course, the Kennedy’s.

I’m not sure just how erotic were the powers of the ancient Sphinx but I doubt such magic could equal the sometimes inspiring fantasies provoked in headier corners of American culture by Marilyn Monroe.

The rest of us, that rude multitude which keeps returning to her movies in order to cast our eyes upon her seemingly utter lack of self-consciousness, we always … until the end, that is … smiled when we saw most of her performances.

It was the end that somehow left her a mystery.

Rather like James Dean, her sudden death not only gave us no time to say goodbye, we were left with a mystery which in both cases, Dean and Monroe, remains.

Some Like It Hot was on television last night in a multi-film tribute to its director/producer, Billy Wilder.

I must say, Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis set a level of achievement in romantic comedy that has rarely been surpassed.

No, I don’t even think Tracy and Hepburn were ever quite as painfully delicious as Curtis and Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

While Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown romped through broad burlesque, Curtis and Monroe held a level of high comedy that climaxed, if you’ll forgive the expression, in their scene together on the yacht.

This was a divine pairing which I don’t believe either of them ever achieved again in any other film.

They both could have given lessons to George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Why Hollywood never paired them up again is one of that insanity’s major oversights.

Yet the mystery of Monroe’s Sphinx-like escape from life?

To this day, no one knows whether her death was accidental, a suicide or a murder.

This, of course, leaves all possible clichés of explanation out of our reach.

We can’t ever be sure.

That her life stretched into the highest halls of American power, right into the White House, conjures up a revelation of American identity that has us all simultaneously embarrassed and titillated.

Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates, is, I believe, the deepest peek into the mystery of Marilyn Monroe.

Ms. Oates leaves her subject an unending but powerful stream of questions.

“If only” is a common response to the unfolding narrative.

If only she hadn’t, at least according to Ms. Oates, aborted the child she had conceived while sharing her home with two men.

Her career called and the standards of Hollywood demanded she not be pregnant out of wedlock.

That is hardly the case now, is it?

Oh, well, Europe had Marlene Dietrich and we had Marilyn Monroe.

I have no doubt there were moments for both Dietrich and Monroe when they both yearned to trade places.

Without a doubt, however, our little human race has been, is and will be enormously enriched for the performances they both left us with.

They were and still are the exceptional miracles of Hollywood.

Utterly different and yet equally as mesmerizing,

They had both been directed by Billy Wilder and, of course, were exploited by him shamelessly for their screen identities.

In Foreign Affairs Dietrich plays a rather nasty, manipulative, German femme fatale in her middle years … 46 to be exact … whose undeniable ethic is “anything it takes to survive.”

Sixteen years earlier, she had burst upon the world, however, playing a similar but much younger, European bombshell in The Blue Angel.

Falling In Love Again became her signature song, her larger-than-life character’s credo.

It was as if life itself were an endless set of possible love affairs.

Yet people who knew her say she was immensely down-to-earth, practical, filled with common sense, even a bit of a hausfrau.

Juggling both ends of female possibility, she survived, indeed, into her 91^st year!

Dietrich, an utter triumph in her life and the other, Ms. Monroe, a tragedy.

Yet both, for me at any rate, are Sphinx-like.

That is their power and, perhaps, a common-denominator to most screen stardom.

Though I find little mystery in, say, the magnetism of either James Cagney or Kirk Douglas – the massive screen energy of both being their main attraction – I find the most indelible personalities within great film acting have that x factor, that indecipherable mystery within their work.

Perhaps if we gazed into ourselves with the same kind of respect for our own mystery that we have had for Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe we might very well understand what it is to be a miracle.

Albeit an ordinary miracle.

But a miracle nonetheless.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama, Mount Rushmore, President Obama’s Speeches, NBC, Comcast, American Kennel Club, Marilyn Monroe, and Clay Aiken.

Oscar season approaches, which means that once again it’s time for the annual cry of … There-Are-No-Good-Roles-For-Women! Maybe “cry” isn’t the best word. ”Whine” is more suitable — from a self-inflicted wound. Here’s a taste of this year’s first-whine from a Hollywood Reporter story titled: Shallow Pool for Oscar’s Actress Contenders:

How shallow is the pool? Some are talking about performances such as Sandra Bullock’s in the feel-good film “The Blind Side

The lack of depth has led to a slew of awards-season chatter, from the expected downplaying — all categories are cyclical — to blanket explanations about studios making fewer awards movies in general. …

But it also highlights that, for all the strides made by the women behind the camera, the women in front of them can still be subject to the old prejudices. Indeed, the more cynical in town — including at least one actress awards-contender — say that the director and actress trends are hardly a coincidence. Many female directors, they argue, can feel pressure to cast a preponderance of strong male leads to negate the perception that theirs is a female-oriented film.

The article is simply wrong on one very important point. These aren’t “old prejudices,” these are new prejudices.

Back in the bad old studio days when a handful of Republican men ran everything, women ruled. Well, maybe not “ruled,” but they were a steady force at the box office because those Republican men spent millions grooming girls into movie stars and building A-pictures around them. (And for a while, Rita Hayworth did rule Columbia.)

At one time or another, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia De Havilland, Jean Harlow, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, Mae West, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, Alice Faye, Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Grable, Esther Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and many, many others worked as regularly and earned nearly as much success (and sometimes more) as their male counterparts in all kinds of films, including big-budget prestige pictures that put many butts in many seats. At one time or another, each was was a stand-alone movie star and many enjoyed long legendary careers.

Did a paternalistic and sometimes sexist system force these women to fight for decent roles in-between casting couch wrestling sessions? Of course, but anyone who wants to argue something’s changed should drop me an email inquiring about a bridge for sale.

But the real story is just how many of those fights were won allowing these immortals to leave behind a wealth of films loaded with strong, dignified, feminine performances that will live for as long as there’s civilization. And what won those sometimes historic battles wasn’t some sense of entitlement over ”fairness.” These women were as tough as they were talented. 

So what changed?

Well, you tell me.

Forty years ago the left started their takeover of the film industry. Now that they own it fully there are more women in executive positions than ever before, and yet most every year you can hear the scrape of a barrel bottom when Oscar nominations are announced.

Sounds to me like some sensitivity training is in order.

But it’s really about the free market. Women don’t draw like they once did and you can trace the reason for that to the roles and the actresses themselves. Somewhere along the line, ”acting like men” became confused with strength, and nudity and sex with romance. Other than a natural charisma and a dab of talent, the secret to stardom is retaining enough sense of mystery to allow audiences to project what they want on you, and nothing breaks that spell quicker than the literal and figurative baring of the ass. 

On the big screen, as in real life, it’s hard to respect someone you’ve just seen tramp around cussing like R. Lee Ermey in “Full Metal Jacket.” For the men in the audience, the illusion is shattered (lust fades, love lasts forever) … for the women, they can no longer relate. Offscreen, no one likes a loudmouth trashing who you are and what you believe in. You can sum the whole problem up in a word … ”class.”

But in the true spirit of socialism, present-day Hollywood’s solution is not an attempt to rebuild the female movie star but to foster equality through the dragging down of the male star.

The death of the movie star is no longer just a “woman’s problem.” Narcissism is an equal-opportunity affliction and without those sexist, paternalistic conservative studio bosses to look out for their shared interests, both male and female stars have worked overtime to deconstruct themselves in the eyes of the public. And so…

…today the chickens and roosters are coming home to roost.

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable.

Spine rigid, arms glued to his side, plum straight steps—no motion in the hips or shoulders—eyes nailed to the distant horizon, Henry Fonda’s walk is a combination of cool reserve and righteous indignation.

Bette Davis, nervously wringing her hands—William Wyler once threatened to chain them down—as she paces back and forth in her pathologically unstable world.

Rapid fire mincing steps, hips and shoulders swaying, Marilyn Monroe is the archetype of the sexually charged woman, and yet simultaneously a little girl who is innocent of her immense power.

And then there is John Wayne.

His walk is odd.

Distinctive, but odd.

It’s a complex, disorienting, and ultimately elegant forward propulsion: long manly strides, elbows bent and poised—like a boxer locked into position—a distinctly feminine swooshing of the hips, and a pronounced case of pigeon toe.

Was Duke’s walk natural?

Or was it part of the John Wayne image, a carefully constructed bit of acting business?

Harry Carey, Jr., in his fascinating memoir, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company, provides invaluable and deeply private insights into the famous John Wayne walk.

First, Harry Carey, Jr. sketches in some background on John Wayne’s intimate relationship with the great character actor Paul Fix (1901–1983) Carey’s father-in-law:

…Paul Fix had almost as much to do with Duke’s success as a screen actor as did John Ford. Paul Fix literally taught John Wayne what John Wayne knew about acting. He was the man who gave Duke his first insight into forming the mold which was to be his persona. Most people give Uncle Jack [John Ford] the credit for this, but the first man to put the John Wayne image into John Wayne’s head was Paul Fix.

Carey, Jr. discusses the early days, the B westerns, and journeyman actor John Wayne’s stage appearance that turned disastrous:

Paul first worked as an actor with Duke in those early westerns. In those days, Paul had a sort of slinky, haunted look about him, like a man who might steal or lie, so of course he was usually cast as a heavy; not the head honcho, though, the sly henchman. He played a lot of gangsters, along with Sheldon Leonard or Barton MacLane. Paul was very serious about acting, and he wrote many plays. He was always putting them on in the little theaters around Hollywood. He cast Duke in one of them, but Duke was so frightened of live theater that he overdosed on booze and made a total ass out of himself. His wife, Josephine [Alicia Saenz], was so furious she screamed from the audience, “You’re a bum—a drunken bum!” What a night in the theater! Little did they know that they were looking at the man who was to become the biggest movie star of all time.

Harry Carey, Jr. reveals how Paul Fix worked behind the scenes as an acting coach to John Wayne during the most important film of Duke’s career.

Duke used to tell Paul that he felt awkward in front of the camera. He said he didn’t know what to do with his hands; that he didn’t feel natural. Not too many years later, Duke got his big break when John Ford cast him as “The Ringo Kid” in Stagecoach. Duke was overwhelmed by this good news but paralyzed with fear that he wouldn’t be able to carry it off. He went to Paul for help. Without John Ford’s knowledge. Duke went to Paul’s house every night to go over the next day’s work while they were shooting in town.

Private and not so private acting coaches are not unusual in Hollywood. Montgomery Clift was so dependent on his acting coach Mira Rostova, that he put her on salary while shooting some of his most famous films. And much to the chagrin of his directors and co-stars, Clift, after every take, would anxiously look to Rostova—not the director—for approval or disapproval of his line readings.

“Not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk.”

And now Carey fills us in on the birth of the legendary John Wayne walk:

Because Duke was kind of heavy-footed and used to trudge more than walk, Paul told Duke to point his toes when he walked, and the “John Wayne walk” was born. Try it yourself. Take a step and point your toe, like you’re stabbing it into the ground—left foot, right foot. Your shoulders automatically move back and forth, and the hips follow, not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk. When Duke first did it, it was ballsey as hell. As the Wayne legend began to form, the walk became more pronounced. Rio Bravo or any of the “Rios” are good examples.

Hollywood stardom is a mysterious thing. In the days when the studio system dominated, the moguls consciously searched for the key to a players potential image. And then, once identified, the studio system—at its best, an incredible make-over machine—created, polished and ruthlessly exploited that star’s specific persona.

No wonder L.B. Mayer alternately broke down in rage and tears when he discovered that Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney ran off in the middle of the night and married the young and sexy Ava Gardner. Mayer was terrified that the public would reject the incredibly profitable Andy Rooney series—innocence and apple pie—when they realized that small town, all American Andy/Mickey was actually something of a dog, hooking up with a hot 17-year old actress—not to mention a host of chorus girls, hookers and vulnerable starlets.

With Clark Gable it gradually became clear to the executives at MGM that he was a man’s man, possessed of a humorous glint in his eye that turned women to jelly. For Jean Arthur it was her sandpaper voice and hesitant delivery that conveyed a woman desperate for control, but on the edge of a melt down. Jean Harlow was perfect as the sexy, vulnerable, wise-cracking tootsie who didn’t take herself too seriously.

But since the demise of the studio system, Hollywood stardom has morphed into an eerie kind of tabloid celebrity. Movie stars no longer have an identifiable movie persona, in fact most work hard at subverting a fixed image. They take pride in grabbing movie roles that go against type. Contemporary actors want to prove that they have range, that they are versatile. Hence, absent a fixed address, the post-modern actor is, with rare exceptions, fated to be excluded from the pantheon of Hollywood immortals.

For John Wayne, after a long Hollywood apprenticeship, his stardom was defined and exquisitely refined as a particular kind of rugged American individual; a man, no matter how conflicted, who recognized the difference between good and evil—and strode across the silver screen like a colossus.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Remember when Hollywood celebrities flocked across the globe to entertain and support American troops? Remember when Hollywood—as a community—denounced tyrants, Jew-haters, and mass murderers?

Joan Crawford as Miss Liberty

My father was a Rabbi, a Chaplain in the 42nd Division during World War II and the Korean War. He often told me just how much the troops loved and respected their Hollywood supporters.

Here’s just a brief sampler of what Hollywood patriotism once looked like.

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In February 1954, on her honeymoon in Japan with Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe took time off and traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. Monroe appeared on stage wearing skimpy outfits in freezing temperatures. The men adored her. She performed ten shows in four days, in front of audiences that totaled more than 100,000 soldiers and Marines.

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Marilyn performs Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.

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Dinah Shore, a hugely popular singer, traveled with USO tours throughout Europe. During one of her tours she met actor George Montgomery. They married in 1943. Soon after the wedding, Montgomery entered active service.

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In the late 1930’s Nazi agents approached Marlene Dietrich and asked her to return to Germany. She flatly turned them down. Dietrich was one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She entertained troops on the front lines in dozens of USO shows. Dietrich hated the Nazis and often spoke out against anti-Semitism. Here, she’s autographing the cast of Earl E. McFarland at U.S. hospital in Belgium 1944.

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Carole Landis probably logged more miles than any other actress in Hollywood during WWII entertaining American troops. She wrote a book about her experiences, Four Jills in a Jeep. Tragically, this generous but deeply unhappy young woman committed suicide in 1948 while carrying on a desperate affair with the married actor Rex Harrison—a notorious womanizer.

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Bob Hope, friend to GI’s, entertains American servicemen at the airstrip in Munda, New Georgia, an island in the central Solomons, on Oct. 31, 1944. Hope’s commitment to America’s troops brought him into four wars: World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam and the Persian Gulf War. When on tour the great comedian usually performed in Army fatigues. A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Bob Hope an “Honorary Veteran.”

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Carole Lombard raised millions of dollars selling war bonds. Tragically, she died in an airplane crash on January 15, 1942, after completing an eight-hour sales drive in Indiana in which she raised $2,017,513 in bonds . She was anxious to reunite with Clark Gable; they had only been married for three years. The last thing she said to him was: “You better get yourself into this man’s army.”

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Following Lombard’s death, deeply depressed and drinking too much, Gable rallied and asked MGM to release him from his contract. He joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. Most of Gable’s friends believed that Hollywood’s greatest leading man was seeking death. Far too old for active service, Gable worked hard to earn his stripes. Gable trained with and accompanied the 351st Heavy Bomb Group as head of a 6-man motion picture unit making a gunnery training film. Gable flew five combat missions in B17’s. In one mission over Germany he was almost killed when a German 20mm shell exploded through the plane’s floor and ripped the heel from one of Gable’s flight boots. Adolf Hitler offered a million dollar bounty to anyone who captured Gable and brought him back to Germany as a POW. Gable was Hitler’s favorite actor. Gable left the Army Air Forces with the rank of Major.

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Jimmy Stewart was a B-24 pilot in World War Two and flew twenty missions over Europe. Stewart ended the war as a command pilot and stayed in the Air Force Reserves until 1968, when he retired as a Brigadier General.

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The Hollywood Canteen, 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California was open from October 3, 1942 until the end of World War II. The club offered food and entertainment for American servicemen. The founders of the Canteen were Bette Davis, John Garfield and composer Jules Stein. All costs and labor for The Hollywood Canteen were donated by the various Hollywood guilds and unions.

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In the Hollywood Canteen, Bette Davis ladles out food for American servicemen. Davis devoted enormous amounts of time to the Canteen and served as its President. When funds ran low, she reached into her own pocketbook to cover expenses. Glamorous stars like Olivia De Havilland, Edward G. Robinson, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Sinatra, Dorothy Lamour, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Randolph Scott and hundreds of others, volunteered to wait on tables, cook in the kitchen and clean up. Notable by their absence in the Hollywood Canteen were three great stars: Jimmy Cagney, Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin. In 1944, Warner Bros. produced a star-studded film—a revue really—about the Hollywood Canteen. When the Canteen closed its doors in November 1945, it had hosted almost three million servicemen.

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Never Forget

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech