Everything Blonde Gets Wrong About The True Story

The following article includes discussions of child abuse, mental illness, sexual assault, domestic violence, abortion, drug use, and suicide.

Andrew Dominik's "Blonde" is not for the faint of heart. Based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, the film is a bleak and unsparing look at the tragic life of actress and icon Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas), from her traumatic childhood in the Great Depression to her death by drug overdose in 1962 at age 36. Dominik and his collaborators, including cinematographer Chayse Irvin and production designer Florencia Martin, have crafted a film that's beautiful to look at but often difficult to watch, casting Monroe as a woman whose ambitions were thwarted by an industry that only saw her as a sex object and someone whose obsession with an absent father kept her falling into one abusive, exploitive relationship after another.

Whether or not this is accurate to Monroe's life is, in a way, beside the point. Oates' novel is very much a work of fiction that uses the bones of Monroe's biography in service of a more poetic consideration of her life and death, and Dominik's screenplay condenses that 700-plus page book into a film that runs just over two-and-a-half hours. Liberties with the historical record have obviously been taken, but in a way, that's more intentional and complicated than simply getting the facts "wrong." Let's look at some of the ways "Blonde" departs from the true story of Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe's fraught upbringing with her mother Gladys is represented primarily by two hellish, frightening sequences early in the film — one where Gladys puts young Norma Jeane in their car and attempts to drive into the Griffith Park wildfire of 1933 and another when she tries to drown her daughter in the bathtub. After the bathtub incident, Gladys is hospitalized and confined to a mental institution for the rest of her life. Norma Jeane, after being cared for by her neighbors (Sara Paxton and Ryan Vincent) for a short time, is dropped off at an orphanage. When she sees her mother again, 10 years later, Norma Jeane has transformed fully into Marilyn, and Gladys — in the throes of schizophrenia — doesn't recognize her.

While the specific incidents presented here may not be confirmed, both Gladys and her mother, Della Monroe, were known to have violent outbursts related to mental illness. Monroe's earliest years were mostly spent in the care of family friends. In an incident detailed in J. Randy Taraborrelli's book "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe," Della talked her way into the home where infant Norma Jeane was living and tried to smother her with a pillow. Later, when Norma Jeane was 3, Gladys attempted to abduct her by stuffing her in a duffel bag. After Gladys was institutionalized in 1934, Norma Jeane was a ward of the state, living in orphanages and foster homes before being taken in by family friend Grace Goddard at age 11. 

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services

In "Blonde," Marilyn Monroe is seen in 1951 auditioning for the Richard Widmark thriller "Don't Bother to Knock." In a tight close-up mimicking the angle of the screen test's camera, Monroe gives an intense, soul-baring monologue. The role is uncomfortably close to her own life — a woman whose mother was abusive and whose father had abandoned her long ago. After she's done, she pleads for another chance but is taken away by her manager, I.E. Shinn (Dan Butler). The crew is dumbfounded by what they saw as a terrible performance, but the director (Garret Dillahunt) is captivated by her looks.

The scene treats Monroe as if she's an unknown at this time, if not stepping in front of the camera for the first time. In reality, she was a sensation almost from the moment she appeared on film, and the year before, she'd made two of her most notable early movies, "All About Eve" and John Huston's noir "The Asphalt Jungle." She'd even weathered a scandal involving nude photos she'd posed for in 1949. As for "Don't Bother to Knock," the film received mixed reviews, but Monroe's performance was singled out for praise, with Variety writing, "Marilyn Monroe ... gives an excellent account of herself in a strictly dramatic role."

In the film, Marilyn Monroe balks at her contracted $500/week salary for appearing in Howard Hawks' musical "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" when she learns that co-star Jane Russell is making $100,000. After all, she's the blonde of the title. But there are other complications in taking the role beyond money. Her pregnancy is a professional barrier, and she also fears that her mother's mental illness could be hereditary. At the studio's insistence, Monroe decides to terminate the pregnancy, leading to the first of the film's two graphic abortion sequences.

Verifying the accuracy of Monroe's abortions, or even if she had any, is difficult. It was illegal nationwide to terminate a pregnancy in 1953, and the notion that Monroe had several abortions in the course of her life was popularized by author Gloria Steinem in her 1986 biography "Marilyn: Norma Jean" (via Vulture). However, it is known that Monroe was paid considerably less for her star-making role in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," one of many small insults during her time under the thumb of Darryl F. Zanuck and a large part of her motivation to break her contract with Fox and start her own production company, a chapter in her life that the film ignores, along with any other sense that Monroe was an active participant in her own career.

Marilyn Monroe's early marriage to the Playwright is idyllic, filmed in widescreen and full color as they frolic on New England beaches. She soon becomes pregnant and is hopeful for the future, even if the mistakes of her past still weigh on her. This feeling is dramatized in the instantly notorious scene in which she hears the voice of her fetus as it begs her not to abort it like she did the last time. When friends of the Playwright's come to visit them, Monroe is nervous about spending time with them, even as he assures her that they are there to see both of them. Her apprehension proves prophetic when she falls on her stomach while bringing a plate of crudite out to their friends on the beach. The fall causes her to bleed profusely from her stomach. In a panic, she screams for the Playwright to save their baby.

While Monroe's possible abortions aren't a matter of public record, her failed pregnancies with Miller very much are. She suffered miscarriages in both 1956 and 1958 and had an ectopic pregnancy that didn't go to term in between. In real life, Monroe's feelings on motherhood were ambivalent. She wrote in her posthumous memoir "My Story" (via Vanity Fair) that at one time, the thought of being a mother "stood [her] hair on end," as she could only envision childhood as she experienced it — as an unloved foster child. Later in life, however, her view softened, and even after the end of her marriage to Miller, she welcomed the idea of being a mother.

After her (possible) nightmare involving her kidnapping and abortion, an increasingly pill-dependent Marilyn Monroe drives through Hollywood, presumably on the Fourth of July. As children play with sparklers, she sees the face of her possible father (Tygh Runyan) — the man in the picture that hung above her bed as a child — beaming proudly from every front yard. She becomes so preoccupied with these visions that she crashes her car headlong into a tree and wanders, dazed, into the street.

There's no evidence that such an accident took place. However, the sequence may be drawing inspiration from the tragic tale of reporter Mara Scherbatoff. According to Jaquo, in 1956, Scherbatoff, a photographer, and their driver were traveling outside Roxbury, Connecticut, to cover an announced press conference by Monroe and Arthur Miller. Scherbatoff, eager for a scoop, tracked the couple's car and pursued it through the winding country roads. The driver lost control of the vehicle, and the car slammed into a tree. Miller and Monroe were the first people on the scene. Scherbatoff was seriously injured and would later die in a nearby hospital. Miller and Monroe continued with the scheduled press conference, though existing footage presents a clearly distraught couple.

One of the biggest controversies that's sprung up around "Blonde" is the way that the film dismisses most of Marilyn Monroe's accomplishments as an artist and businesswoman in favor of scene after scene of abuse and degradation. Little in the film would inform an audience at what a talented comic and dramatic actor Monroe was or the accolades she received when she was alive. The film details her outbursts and meltdowns during the reportedly difficult production of "Some Like It Hot" but not that Monroe won a Golden Globe for her performance or that she was nominated for her performance in the film "Bus Stop" in 1957, an acclaimed film that "Blonde" doesn't even mention.

The film omits any detail about Monroe's feud with Darryl F. Zanuck over the quality of roles she was getting at 20th Century Fox, a battle that resulted in Monroe forming her own production company in New York. This audacious move is seen in hindsight as playing a part in the end of the "studio system" that kept actors — even megastars like Monroe — beholden to exploitative and unfair contracts. In glossing over Arthur Miller's leftist politics and struggles against McCarthyism, the film also shortchanges Monroe's own progressive streak and her work with organizations like the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. No film can cover every facet of a person's life, but so much of what made Monroe a lasting icon, rather than a mere body to be abused, seems to have been left out of the film.