I just read My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark, which the upcoming film starring Michelle Williams is based on. Clark was a 23-year-old affluent young man whose parents knew the director and star of The Prince and the Showgirl, Laurence Olivier, who hired Clark as an assistant. After an accidental run-in with Monroe, Clark became her confidante. When her husband, Henry Miller, abandoned his new wife in England and headed to Paris, Monroe turned to Clark to escape the pressures of her personal and professional life. The book does a good job of depicting Marilyn’s erratic highs and lows, while revealing both her playfulness and loneliness. It was interesting to read Clark’s perspective on how everyone treated Marilyn — like a dumb blonde, a bag of money or a prize.
Here is a new clip of Michelle Williams, in My Week with Marilyn, performing Monroe’s iconic rendition of “Heatwave.”