On August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home, an empty bottle of sleeping pills by her bed. She had become what she had aspired to be, a movie star. I doubt she ever conceived that she would become a cultural icon, the embodiment of sensuality, glamour, and radiant beauty.
In July a 26-foot statue of MM was unveiled in Pioneer Court, Chicago; the work of sculptor Seward Johnson who called it “Forever Marilyn.” Good name because MM is etched into history as surely as President John F. Kennedy to whom she famously sang Happy Birthday.
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan, took note of the present “American unease” saying the reasons for it were in some ways “deeper and more pervasive” than concerns of the current financial crisis. “Some are cultural. Here are only two,” she wrote. “Pretty much everyone over 50 in America feels on some level like a refugee. That’s because they were born in one place—the old America—and live now in another.”
