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11/3/2011

Marilyn - Hollywood Icon

The American Museum in Britain, Bath

As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2011, the American Museum in Britain celebrates the enduring legacy of one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). From 12 March to 30 October 2011, the American Museum is presenting Marilyn – Hollywood Icon, an exhibition that will showcase the largest privately owned collection of Monroe’s film costumes and personal gowns, as well as intimate items of memorabilia that hint at the vulnerable and self-destructive personality behind the glamorous facade.

Throughout her life, Monroe’s self-confidence and ability to be happy was destabilised by the threat (real or imagined) of inherited mental illness. She was born Norma Jeane Mortensen – the third and youngest child of Gladys Pearl Baker Mortensen, née Monroe, a film cutter for Columbia and RKO. Gladys was unable to look after any of her children and Norma Jeane lived with foster parents for most of her childhood. Poignantly, the girl did live with her mother for a few months in 1933 before Gladys suffered a severe breakdown and was institutionalized – as were both her parents. The exhibition features previously unpublished photographs of Gladys. Her prettiness mirrors that of her famous daughter – especially noticeable in an image of a thirteen year old Gladys under a parasol. Only a year later, Gladys would be married to a man over ten years her senior, who would often beat her. After the couple divorced in 1922, Gladys’s ex-husband kidnapped their two children, even though custody had been awarded to her.

When she died in 1962, Marilyn Monroe was almost $400,000 in debt and her body was only saved from a pauper’s grave by her bereft ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio. “I am not interested in money,” Marilyn had claimed several years earlier, “I just want to be wonderful.”

All of the costumes and objects on display at the American Museum are part of the David Gainsborough Roberts Collection, an extraordinary gathering of celebrity memorabilia created during the past twenty years by this enthusiastic and knowledgeable collector who lives in Jersey. “I am delighted,” Gainsborough Roberts comments, “that so wide a range of items in my collection can be placed on view at the American Museum for its fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Marilyn is, for me, the quintessential Hollywood figure – beautiful, glamorous, talented, and yet so human, so tragically vulnerable at the same time. How appropriate that her legend can be celebrated by so many people in such a magnificent setting as the American Museum.”

David Gainsborough Roberts will be in the UK for the press view on Tuesday 8 March at Claverton Manor, Bath. If you wish to interview him, please do contact us and we would be happy to make the necessary arrangements

For further information, Press View information, other press releases, and images, please contact:
Sue Bond Public Relations
Hollow Lane Farmhouse, Thurston, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP31 3RQ, UK
Tel. +44 (0)1359 271085, Fax. +44 (0)1359 271934
E-mail. info@suebond.co.uk, Website. www.suebond.co.uk

Image: Marilyn Monroe on the set of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, 1953.
© Sunset Boulevard/Corbis

Opening 12 March 2011

The American Museum in Britain
Claverton Manor, Bath BA2 7BD
Opening Times: 12 March – 30 October 2011
Tuesday to Sunday, 12noon – 5pm
Last admission to the main collection is 4pm
Closed Mondays (We are open on Bank Holiday Mondays and Mondays during the month of August)

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