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Marilyn Monroe

The Biography

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Marilyn Monroe

Written by: Donald Spoto
Narrated by: Anna Fields
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About this listen

Fifty years after her death, Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe still beguiles the world, her image enthralling millions. Many books have attempted to explain her allure and tell her story, but none has succeeded as well as this work by acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto.

Spoto’s exhaustive research uncovers a conspiracy of silence, allowing him to present the facts, free from often-repeated myths and speculation. Granted access to more than thirty-five thousand pages of formerly sealed files containing letters, diaries, appointment books, and other intimate papers, he also interviewed nearly two hundred people who had never before spoken on record. From the papers of Marilyn’s psychiatrist and her medical files to recently declassified government documents, the truth emerges and provides a moving, often shocking picture of the real Marilyn Monroe - including her connection to the Kennedys and the bizarre, horrifying truth about how she really died.

©1993 Donald Spoto (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Entertainment & Celebrities Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV Women Celebrity Biography Entertainment

What the critics say

"This is a book that wound up teaching me a great deal about Hollywood, the social history of California, the movie business, the trials of female actors in American show business, and the life of a woman who has been so mythologized that often the real woman is obscured from actual view." (Erica Jong for Washington Post Book World)
"Spoto has given Monroe the treatment she deserves. At last she emerges not as a goddess but as a human being in this extraordinary volume." ( Daily Telegraph)
"Provocative!" ( Entertainment Weekly)
All stars
Most Relevant
I admit that I didn’t know all that much about Marilyn Munroe’s life. My interest was piqued when I saw there is a new book coming out about her interest in books (I have preordered it), so thought I’d read a biography of her first. I am glad I chose this one! It is very well done and respectful, even when discussing troubling times. All based on real facts - plus the many hairbrainbed theories about her life and death are debunked in the last chapter.

Very good

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feels like im listening to a university lecture with too many names I won't remember. the information is interesting but it takes me a while to understand it and I would never remember all the people mentioned.

interesting information

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There are so many mistakes I noticed as I listened to this great book
First is the recitation of Grace's birthdate saying she was born Jan 1st 1985 instead of 1885
Just one hundred years off.
Later in the reading there are multiple errors in names from "Henry" to Harry Weinstein and
then the mixup of Walter "Bernstein" to Walter Weinstein and so on...over and over mixing up
names in the same paragraphs etc...
This is not well read or else Donald Spoto got his names mixed up in the book itself
Otherwise I loved the detailed manuscript of the movie star's life!

wonderful biography

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