Welcome to the Marilyn Archive

Hi! My name is Tara Hanks and I’m the author of The Mmm Girl, a novel about Marilyn Monroe - and way back in 2010, I started a daily blog on Marilyn called ES Updates, part of the Everlasting Star online community. After a decade, I moved to a fully independent blog, The Marilyn Report, which continues to this...

‘The Hook’: Marilyn and Arthur Miller’s Lost Screenplay

First posted here on June 10, 2015 The Hook, Arthur Miller’s long-buried screenplay about a bitter conflict between workers on the Brooklyn docks – a district still known as Red Hook – is finally being staged at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton after more than sixty years on the shelf, as Matt Trueman...

Remembering ‘Marilyn! The Musical’

First posted here on December 28, 2017 Must Close Saturday: The Decline and Fall Of The British Musical Flop, a new book by Adrian Wright, covers Mort Garson's short-lived 1983 show, Marilyn! The Musical. Despite winning an endorsement from Anna Strasberg, the executor of Marilyn’s estate, the show failed to win over critics and closed...

Marilyn: The Quest For An Oscar

First posted here on January 6, 2016 As this year’s awards season gets underway, many MM fans will bemoan the fact that she never won, or was even nominated for an Oscar. Of course, there will always be sceptics who believe she was more of a star than an actress. However, when we consider how...

Marilyn and Khrushchev in Hollywood

First posted here on December 22, 2015 This second extract from Alistair Cooke at the Movies focuses on ‘The Script That Got Away: Mr Khruschev’s Propaganda Tour at US Expense’, an article about the Soviet premier’s historic visit, published in The Guardian after Marilyn attended a Twentieth Century-Fox luncheon in Khrushchev’s honour on September 20, 1959. “He was whizzed so fast...

When ‘Typhoon Marilyn’ Came to Tokyo

First posted here on June 28, 2019 Heather Howard has accessed the Yomiuri Shimbun archives on Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio’s Far-East adventure for The Japan News. “‘Typhoon Marilyn Monroe comes to Tokyo.’ She certainly did, with a force so powerful it sent some of her fans tumbling into a pond at the Imperial Hotel. On...

John Jeter Remembers Marilyn in Korea

First posted here on November 12, 2019 84 year-old John Earl Jeter of Alexandria, VA has shared his memories of serving in the Korean War with Town Talk. “Sitting on his couch, his hands clasped between his knees, John Earl Jeter repeatedly diverts attention from himself to those ‘good men’ he served with during the...

Bill Wamke Remembers Marilyn in Korea

First posted here on November 10, 2017 Bill Wamke, who was drafted by the US Army in 1952 and was appointed stenographer to the Commanding General of the 25th Infantry Division, recalls meeting Marilyn during her 1954 tour of Korea in an interview with the Kokomo Herald. “‘She got to because our division was not...

Remembering Marilyn and Joe in Japan

First posted here on August 23, 2018 Over at Japan Today, Patrick Parr looks back at the newlywed Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio’s eventful trip to the Far East in 1954, where he was honoured by Japan's baseball fans, and she entertained US troops in Korea. (They’re photographed above with the manager of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel,...

George Purifoy Remembers Marilyn in Korea

First posted here on November 29, 2015 86 year-old George Purifoy of Franklin Park, Illinois, has shared his memory of meeting Marilyn during her 1954 USO tour of Korea with TribLive News. “It’s 10 a.m., and the breakfast club of old friends meets at a Panera Bread restaurant in the North Hills. They come daily,...

Remembering Marilyn and Choi Eun-Hee in Korea

First posted here on April 29, 2011 This photograph showing Marilyn with another screen beauty, Choi Eun-hee, at Seoul Airport in February 1954, is featured at the Korean Film Museum (KOFA.) The South Korean actress was joined by another star, Paek Song, to greet Marilyn as she flew in from Japan on a 4-day tour...