MARILYN AMONG FRIENDS.

by Sam Shaw

Softcover in excellent condition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Photography

Hardcover

First published May 5, 1987

Reviews

[Liza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as captivating as the one by Andre Dienes, but still intriguing. Yet another perspective by those that actually knew her. Seemed more 3rd person account than first person. The pictures are lovely and most I had never seen before. Nice book.

[Phoebe Bonded By Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. It was an easy and quick read, lent itself perfectly to just reading a little section between jobs. I adored the photos in here, many I had never seen before and to be perfectly honest I would love to have on my wall.

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful photos by the legendary Sam Shaw, some of my faves of a mid-50s Marilyn enjoying her time in New York and Connecticut (including those beautiful shots of her in the Rosten's garden in her blue and white polka dot dress and white sleeveless top with that chunky necklace and the Rosten's ). Sporting a more natural/less made-up look and looking absolutely stunning.

Wonderful text by Marilyn's friend in New York the poet Norman Rosten, which spoke to Marilyn's generosity of spirit, her natural love, child-like curiosity and enthusiasm for poetry, expanding her cultural knowledge, children and animals, such as the Rosten's Bassett Hound Hugo who she charmingly dotes on and worries about (Rosten comically and intimately capturing how concerned she was that the dog would hurt his male apparatus on rocky walks) which to me comes across real neurodivergent (see my review of the Spoto biography).

Rosten also described her crippling insecurities, her wish to be a good wife and how she had difficulty meeting typical 50s expectations. And some of the issues with her increasingly tense marriage to Miller, their differences in temperament - his intellectual coolness and her passions and sensitivities.

Text was so lovingly and insightfully written that it made me want to buy Rosten's own book on Marilyn (which finally found recently at a decent price on Amazon Marketplace yay!).

One star off because the quality of the printed photos is not the best and can look a little cheap, could do with a proper reissue on better quality paper.

[Monty Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

First American Edition

A beautiful collection of photographs of the actress by Sam Shaw in collaboration with Norman Rosten’s Prose depicting and describing the actresses life inclusive of personal, career, glamor and parties.

A picture is worth one thousand words, and what the authors overlook is captured by the observer of these images and the emotions which they convey

[Piper Winchester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved seeing a different side of Marilyn from a friends POV.

[Duke Haney]

Apparently, if a writer writes even a single piece about Marilyn Monroe, he or she will be forever afterward gifted with books about her. This book is the second such gift I've received since my own piece about MM was published during the summer; here's a review of my first gift: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/.... Both books are really photo collections, and the photographer in this case is Sam Shaw, whose best pictures of MM were taken during her relationship with Shaw's friend Arthur Miller. Shaw and Miller, meanwhile, both knew poet and novelist Norman Rosten, who supplies the text of "Marilyn Among Friends," having already written a memoir about MM in the seventies. MM regarded Rosten as one of her closest friends; she warmed to him in part because he failed to recognize her on the day they were introduced by Shaw, who, Rosten thought, had referred to the girl who suddenly appeared at his Brooklyn apartment as "Marion." Hence his courteous treatment of her had nothing to do with her fame. Also, Rosten was a family man, as was Shaw, and waifish MM was always one to graft herself onto families, following a troubled childhood during which she lived, by her count, in eleven foster homes, in addition to a Hollywood orphanage.

Many of the photos in this book can be found online, but one I've never seen before has MM enjoying an outing with Rosten's wife, his young daughter, and an equally young family friend. MM is dressed casually and modestly, and she wears a scarf and sunglasses -- in fact, she's the only person in the photo whose eyes can't be seen, yet the viewer's eyes immediately go to her, and that would happen, I'm confident, even the viewer took her for an anonymous "Marion." One wishes that she had posed more often for Shaw, who knew her before she fled Hollywood for New York. (She once said that, when she retired, she planned to live in Brooklyn -- her favorite place, interestingly.) As it is, this book is a bit padded with photos in which MM is absent. Of course, as some famous photographer (was it Henri Cartier-Bresson?) once said, there's no such thing as a bad old photo; even poor ones become fascinating when enough time has passed. I'm paraphrasing, but this notion seems especially true when applied to a photo of, for instance, Marlon Brando playing softball or of Joe DiMaggio hanging out, shades of "La Dolce Vita," on the Via Veneto. So the inclusion of such peripheral photos is fine by me. As for Rosten's text, we can assume that he had already used his best stuff in his earlier MM memoir; his most memorable passage here is saved for last: "In those years, people, friends, were closer. There was more meaning to friend-ship [sic]. Today [the late eighties], the pursuit of happiness is more brutally the pursuit of power, its seekers trusting in things rather than feelings. People like Marilyn never quite made it from power to happiness. She had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but lacked the control."

But she certainly controlled the camera, being not just a passive poem but one of the camera's all-time greatest poets.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful book.