Overview

American beauty. Marilyn's legend and legacy captured by two journalistic greats. Now TASCHEN has paired Mailer's original text with Bert Stern's photographs from the legendary ""Last Sitting"" - widely considered the most intimate photographs of Monroe ever taken - to create a fitting tribute to the woman who, at the time of her death in 1962, was the world's most famous, a symbol of glamour and eroticism for an entire generation. But though she was feted and adored by her public, her private life was that of a little girl lost, desperate to find love and security. Mailer's Marilyn is beautiful, tragic, and complex. As Mailer reviews her life - from her bleak childhood, the bruising and sometimes tawdry early years, superstardom, see-saw romantic life, through to the mysterious circumstances of her death - she emerges as a symbol of the bizarre decade during which she reigned as Hollywood's greatest female star. Mailer's masterful text is perfectly complemented by Bert Stern's penetrating photographs of a 36-year old Marilyn for ""Vogue"", just weeks before her death. Taken over a period of three days, Marilyn had never allowed herself to be scrutinized so closely - nor had she looked so breathtakingly beautiful. In this bold synthesis of literary classic and legendary portrait sitting, Mailer and Stern lift the veils of confusion surrounding Monroe - the woman, the star, the sex symbol - and offer profound insight into an iconic figure whose true personality remains elusive and enigmatic even today.

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9783836511858

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Reviews

This book is really two books. It is a biography, and it is also a pictorial retrospective of an actress whose greatest love affair was conceivably with the camera. (Norman Mailer wrote these words in his 1973 biography, Marilyn.)

Author Information

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential writers, as well as one of America's most renowned and controversial literary figures. The best-selling author of a dozen novels and 20 works of nonfiction, he also wrote stage plays, screenplays, television miniseries, hundreds of essays, two books of poetry, and a collection of short stories. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Bert Stern (b. 1929) is one of America's greatest portrait photographers, who during the 1960s produced 200 pages annually for Vogue, as well as many of the most important print and television advertising campaigns. He is best known for his revolutionary print ads for Smirnoff and his portrait sitting with Marilyn Monroe just six weeks before her death. Stern lives and works in New York City.

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