Nachem Malech Mailer, known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.
Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".
Norma Jean & Marilyn is a 1996 made-for-TV biographical film produced by HBO and premiered on May 18, 1996. The film featured Ashley Judd as Norma Jean Dougherty and Mira Sorvino as Marilyn Monroe. It was partially based on the 1989 book Norma Jean: My Secret Life With Marilyn Monroe by actor Ted Jordan, who claimed to have had a years-long relationship with Monroe.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe, an American actress and sex symbol, died at age 36 of a barbiturate overdose inside her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn the following morning, on August 5. Monroe had been one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was a top-billed actress for the preceding decade. Her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death.
Milton H. Greene was an American fashion and celebrity photographer and film and television producer, best known for his photo shoots with Marilyn Monroe.
Lawrence Julian Schiller is an American photojournalist, film producer, director and screenwriter.
American actress Marilyn Monroe's life and persona have been depicted in film, television, music, the arts, and by other celebrities.
Johnny Hyde was an American talent agent who developed the career of Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn: An American Fable is a musical with a book by Patricia Michaels and music and lyrics by Jeanne Napoli, Doug Frank, Gary Portnoy, Beth Lawrence, and Norman Thalheimer.
J. Michael Lennon is an American academic and writer who is the Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University and the late Norman Mailer’s archivist and authorized biographer. He published Mailer's official biography Norman Mailer: A Double Life in 2013. He edited Mailer's selected letters in 2014 and the Library of America's two-volume set Norman Mailer: The Sixties in 2018.
Strawhead is a play by American writers Norman Mailer and Richard Hannum about Marilyn Monroe. The play is an adaptation of Mailer's 1980 book Of Women and Their Elegance, an imagined memoir told in Monroe's voice.
Tom Kelley Sr. was an American photographer who photographed Hollywood celebrities in the 1940s and 1950s. He is best known for his iconic 1949 nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe, which were distributed widely as calendar art—one of which was featured in the inaugural issue of Playboy magazine in 1953. He paid Marilyn Monroe only $50 dollars for the shoot.
Bob Henriques (1930–2011) was an American photojournalist who was active in the 1950s and early 1960s. He was an Associate of Magnum Photos, and a free-lance photographer for Life Magazine. He is best known for his photos of movie stars, particularly Marilyn Monroe, the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, and the Cuban Revolution.
Marilyn: Norma Jean is a biography of Marilyn Monroe by feminist Gloria Steinem. Published in 1988, the book features pictures by photographer George Barris and thus evokes Norman Mailer's 1973 controversial biography Marilyn that also essentially is a long essay on Monroe added to a book of photographs.
Of Women and Their Elegance is an imaginary memoir about Marilyn Monroe by Norman Mailer. The book uses photographs taken by Milton H. Greene in combination with real interviews of Monroe and fictional events that Mailer invents. The book, written entirely in first person, purports to express the innermost thoughts of Monroe. There are also photos by Greene of other celebrities like Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, and Jane Fonda.
Blonde is a 2022 American biographical psychological drama film written and directed by Andrew Dominik, and the second adaptation, with the same name, based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. The film is a fictionalized take on the life and career of American actress Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas. The cast also includes Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, and Julianne Nicholson.
The Faith of Graffiti is a 1974 essay by American novelist and journalist Norman Mailer about New York City's graffiti artists. Mailer's essay appeared in a shorter form in Esquire and as a book with 81 photographs by Jon Naar and design by Mervyn Kurlansky. Through interviews, exploration, and analyses, the essay explores the political and artistic implications of graffiti. The essay was controversial at the time of publication because of its attempt to validate graffiti as an art form by linking it with great artists of the past. Mailer, too, was criticized for using the essay as a platform to express his political grievances. Faith grew out of Mailer's existential philosophy of the hip, in which a Hipster is guided by his instincts regardless of consequences or perception, and upholds graffiti as a subversive and healthy check on the status quo. Like several of his other non-fiction narratives, Mailer continued his use of new journalism techniques, adopting a persona, the A-I or "Aesthetic Investigator", to provide both an objective distance from the topic and to engender the text with the creative and critical eye of the novelist.
Carl E. Rollyson is an American biographer and professor of journalism at Baruch College, City University of New York.
Berniece Inez Gladys Miracle was an American writer, known for her memoir My Sister Marilyn (1994) about her half-sister, actress Marilyn Monroe.
James Dougherty was an American police officer, the first trainer of Special Weapons and Tactics. He is best known as the first husband of actress Marilyn Monroe.
