What Marilyn would have done next...

I’ve loved Marilyn Monroe for as long as I’ve loved films, which is to say forever. Her comedies – Some Like It Hot (1959), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) (especially Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) – are the first films I became obsessed with, watching them repeatedly. While other girls my age were singing along to the Spice Girls’ Wannabe and cleaning their Reebok Classics, I was learning the lyrics to Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend and perfecting the sleepy eyeliner technique. 

Yet it’s only in the last few months that I feel I’ve really got to know Marilyn. That’s because I’ve had the privilege of visiting the places where she lived and worked, viewing some of her most prized possessions and meeting several of her closest friends, in order to make Bombshell: Five Faces of Marilyn Monroe, a five-part BBC Radio 4 documentary which starts on 1 June, on what would have been her 100th birthday.

Marilyn didn’t live to see 100 – she didn’t even live to see 40, because, as everyone knows, she died tragically young, at 36, of a probable suicide. Or an accidental overdose. Or a conspiracy involving the CIA, the Mafia and the Kennedy brothers. Take your pick.

It could have been different, though. She was, like many great artists, vastly ahead of her time. Only in retrospect can we see how intuitively she negotiated the distance between private and public selves, long before Instagram was a thing or the term “parasocial” had been coined. But if ever there was a gal who inspired everyone to treat her like an intimate, it was our Marilyn. Here, then, is my letter to my close personal friend on the occasion of her 100th birthday.

Dear Marilyn,

If you had lived to see the morning light of 5 August 1962, you would have woken up in your own bed and to a world bright with opportunity. 

For the first time, you had a home you could truly call your own, having purchased your “cute little Mexican-style house" in Los Angeles that February. I drove past it last month and, even 64 years later, it’s still a beautiful, peaceful spot.

You were riding high in Hollywood, having just prevailed in your latest battle with 20th Century Fox. That two-picture deal would have made you a millionaire – and about time too! You’d already made many millions for the studios, while being on a capped weekly salary yourself. 

Brava also on reminding the world of your supreme star power and “knock[ing] Elizabeth Taylor off the front of every magazine cover” with that impromptu nude photoshoot. You always did have a knack for publicity, plus, by this point in your career, an understanding of photography to equal any of the greats you’d posed for. 

Yes, there would be struggles ahead, but you’d already overcome so much. You’d smartly sought therapy to address the deep psychic wounds of parental abandonment (everybody who can afford it does therapy these days, so you were ahead of your time there as well). But even before any breakthroughs with Dr Greenson, you had known how to seize the reins of your life and steer it in your chosen direction. Remember back in 1954 when, at the height of your fame, you left it all behind and moved cross-country, so you could recommit to your craft at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio? The studio execs were furious. But what courage! What determination! What vision!

Your risk-taking paid off too. With the fashion photographer Milton Greene, you co-founded an independent film company, Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP). This enabled you to break free from Hollywood’s “dumb blonde” typecasting and demonstrate your range with more dramatic roles in two MMP co-productions, Bus Stop (1956) and The Prince and The Showgirl (1957). 

MMP soon imploded (I blame the meddling of your third husband, Arthur Miller, but don’t get me started …). Still, you would try again. In a December 1961 letter to Lee Strasberg, you proposed he join you and mutual friend Marlon Brando in the founding of a new production company. “I have hopes of finally establishing a piece of ground for myself to stand on,” you wrote, “instead of the quicksand I have always been in.” In this letter, you also looked forward to a future when you might recede into the background: “This independent production unit will also be making pictures without me.”

That was another really smart idea of yours. You would have had to shoot your contracted comedies with Fox first, which would entail revisiting an old shtick you’d long since outgrown. But once completed, you would have had the freedom to pursue projects that were really meaningful to you.

(And, given your progressive attitude to sex and nudity, I do think you would have got a kick out of becoming the first actress of the sound era to appear topless in a mainstream movie. As it was, Something’s Got to Give remained unfinished and that title went instead to one of your many imitators, Jayne Mansfield, for 1963’s Promises! Promises!).

As head of your new production company, maybe you would have finally made that long-mooted biopic of your childhood idol and fellow blonde bombshell, Jean Harlow. Or even mounted your own adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It would definitely have been livelier than the 1958 film that MGM foolishly made with some other blonde in the role of Grushenka, while you were pursuing a quieter family life with Arthur Miller. 

Speaking of family, I hope you would have met up for a cocktail with Jane Russell, your co-star on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I know she regretted falling out of touch, when you had once been so close. She wrote in her memoir that she’d been meaning to call you when she received word of your death. You could have discussed your shared struggles with infertility, and maybe her experience of adoption would have inspired you to explore other ways of becoming a mother.

I think you would have stayed friends with the great photographer Sam Shaw, with whom you collaborated on those ingenious white dress/NYC subway grate photos. When he got into producing himself, working extensively with independent film pioneer John Cassavetes, perhaps you would have been intrigued enough to take a small part in A Woman Under The Influence (1974) or Gloria (1980), alongside your lookalike, Gena Rowlands.

Or maybe, as you moved into your 40s, 50s and 60s, you would have found other outlets beside acting for your creativity. You had written poetry casually for many years, so you might have started taking that more seriously and published some of it (just like Jean Harlow made good on her ambition to write a novel). You might even have written plays too, and had your literary revenge on by-now-ex-husband Arthur Miller, for his insulting portrayal of you in The Misfits (1961). Imagine the look on his face! 

Certainly he would have had to think twice before teaming up with another ex of yours, the director Elia Kazan, to stage that thinly veiled, condescending critique of your demise that was his 1964 play After the Fall. The great James Baldwin was so outraged on your behalf that he stormed out halfway through and later suggested to Ava Gardner that they protest outside the theatre. You could have joined them on the picket line.

See, Marilyn, you always had a lot of friends looking out for you, and wellwishers cheering you on from afar. That’s one thing I know would never change. 

Your fan forever,

Ellen

Bombshell: Five Faces of Marilyn Monroe airs on BBC Radio 4 in the UK from 1 June

Ellen E Jones is the Nerve’s film critic. A writer and broadcaster, her book Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber) won the Kraszna-Krausz Prize. She co-hosts the BBC’s flagship film and TV programme, Screenshot, on BBC Radio 4, and won the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Presenter of The Year, 2025.