I don't mean rhinestones

 

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Ella Fitzgerald; Marilyn Monroe

Recently I saw a movie about Judy Garland's life, and then I watched one about Marilyn Monroe.

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[Life with Judy Garland:  Me and My Shadows, 2001.  TV miniseries based on a book written by Judy's daughter Lorna Luft.

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, 2015.  Made-for-TV movie.]

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     Both of these actresses loomed influentially over American popular culture in the years before I was born, and during my lifetime, beginning in childhood, an awareness of who they were grew in my mind as naturally as learning to count, or skip rope.

"If happy little bluebirds fly

Beyond the rainbow,

Why, oh why can't I?"

"A kiss on the hand may be 

Quite continental,

But diamonds are a girl's best friend!"

After seeing these two movie biographies back-to-back, I noticed something I had never thought about before--how similar their personal lives were.  Their struggles:

marriages that tanked

job attendance issues

weird moms

barbiturates and amphetamines

...and what I can only describe as an inability to be happy and enjoy some peace.  Like -- perpetual, ongoing discontent, or something.

Lotta drama.

Their lives ran parallel to each other, in the era.  Until I watched these biographical movies, I had never thought of Judy and Marilyn at the same time -- like, together...

Judy Garland (Frances Gumm) was born in 1922; Marilyn (Norma Jeane Mortenson) in 1926.

Marilyn Monroe died in 1962; Judy in 1969.

I remember news of Judy Garland's passing:  in the car with my mom and dad going somewhere, or coming back--and I was asking, Why did she die?  What happened?  Why?  What was wrong?  I can't really recall what kind of answers I got.  I just had a sort of strong feeling of emptiness and shock, that "Dorothy" from The Wizard of Oz could die.

     Both Monroe and Garland died from overdose of barbiturates.

     Judy Garland was married five times; Marilyn, three.

One You Tube Comment under the Monroe movie read,

"She needed help, not husbands."

     Marilyn Monroe's first marriage was kind of an arrangement.  With no father, and a mother who was in and out of mental health facilities, she grew up in the care of other families.

     When she was barely 16, the family she was living with was moving out of state due to the dad's job transfer, and at 16 it was not legal, or something, for her to live on her own, and she would have had to go and live in an orphanage.

     So the mother of the family she lived with encouraged her to marry the 21-year-old neighbor, who was an acquaintance of the young Marilyn.

     (Yikes.)

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Marilyn Monroe's other two husbands were

big-time baseball player Joe DiMaggio (1954-1955), and

big-time playwright Arthur Miller (1956-1961).

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