Blonde: A Novel

Despite some people thinking Some Like It Hot is the actress’s masterpiece, she realizes that her life is in ruins while she makes it. On set, she insists on doing many takes of her scenes to make them better. At one point, Norma Jeane becomes hysterical, and Doc Fell comes to her with medication. Norma Jeane does not believe she is Marilyn Monroe, but she still wants people to love Marilyn Monroe so that they will love Norma Jeane. She imagines her supporting herself and her father and him attending events with her. She wonders if he is ashamed to claim Marilyn Monroe as his daughter. 

Her leading man, C, despises her. Meanwhile, the Playwright continues to try to help her. He is worried that she is trying to destroy herself with drugs. She has difficulty expressing anger onstage, and she is told that this is because she wants people to love her rather than destroy her. There are rumors that Marilyn, as she is now frequently referred to in the novel, is taking many drugs, and she gets them from numerous doctors who do not know about each other. Marilyn begins to arrive late for work or fail to show up at all, and she does not believe she deserves to live. The actor C is bitter toward Monroe, and once when he kisses her in the film, she accuses him of applying poison to his lips to kill her. Still, she is at times brilliant in her acting. During filming, she experiences significant insomnia, for which she takes drugs, and she is taken to the emergency room once.

Norma Jeane meets a brunette. She had wanted the brunette’s part, but they told her that she must be the blonde. The brunette considers them both high-class hookers, but Norma Jeane insists that acting is art and that she wants to be a great actress.

Again Norma Jeane thinks she is a “sad, sick cow piece of meat cunt that’s dead inside” (638).

The sharpshooter has been shooting things since he was a child. His killings are not vengeful. He began working for the Agency in 1946 and believes evil is now in America in the form of communism.

When Roslyn says “I miss my mother” in The Misfits, it is said that everyone knows that this is really the actress speaking these words. The Playwright wrote the screenplay. He continued to love Norma Jeane after she began to reject him. She meets up with H, who gave Norma Jeane her first film role. She believed she earned this role because she lay down while doing the scene, but he tells her it was because of her ass. She is happy that, in this film, she can be a woman rather than a blonde. By this time, her eyes are so bloodshot from drugs that it would have shown up had the film been in color. 

Monroe begins to impress H in her performances. One day, she sees the Playwright’s desk, and on it, she sees a conversation as it played out between her doctor and him in which the doctor tells her that her uterus is so scarred from all the crude abortions she has had that she is unlikely to conceive any babies. One day, Norma Jeane feels stinging red ants in her mouth during her drugged sleep. The Playwright starts to worry that he will not survive losing Norma Jeane. Norma Jeane’s brain is now said to be broken. She costars with Clark Gable and thinks how he was the Dark Prince she used to watch in movie theaters; she used to think he was her father. She hopes that he is.

Marilyn sees her Magic Friend singing onstage. It is someone impersonating her, and she is upset that she is seen as being nothing more than something to laugh at.

This chapter is told in four parts. Norma Jeane is divorced and is told to present herself as a widow instead. People blame her for Clark Gable’s heart attack, saying that the stress of working with her brought it on. Norma Jeane wonders why she is always so lonely when so many people love her. She wonders what is wrong with her. She wants to complete legal paperwork to ensure her mother’s continued care should something happen to her. She believes that the studio has hired Otto to be her press representative, but the man is adamant that he is not him. Norma Jeane gets a Valentine envelope, and it is just the word “whore” printed in excrement.

Norma Jeane writes her mother a letter telling her that she is in her own house and that she is divorced. She also tells her that her father has been writing to her and that she purchased their old piano. She promises her mother that she will one day have grandchildren.

President John F. Kennedy tells the man frequently referred to as the President’s Pimp that he wants to date Monroe. The pimp tries to talk him out of it by saying he just wants to meet her in the cabana on the estate they are both at. The pimp tells him of the dozen abortions she has had, her drug habits, and her suicide attempts. He tells the man he wants her within the hour.

JFK tells Monroe that he knows what it is like to be lonely. She believes they fell in love quickly. She knows she should not drink because of her medications, but she does anyway. With him, she believes she is the girl from the subway grate rather than all those other girls who experienced tragedies. He tells her that he will call her Pronto. When they have sex, he tells her that she is dirty, and he is quite aggressive. They plan to meet again.

Norma Jeane gets calls from the President. She has heard that he passes women to his brothers, brothers-in-law, and friends when he is done with them, but she does not believe this will happen to her.

The Secret Service take Norma Jeane to her rendezvous with the President. They appear to scorn her, and they tell her that, unlike what she was led to believe, Kennedy will not be spending the weekend with her because he has to leave town. When they get to the hotel, she feels like she is a meat delivery. 

Inside, she is given the opportunity to use the restroom. In there, she sees other tissues with lipstick on them. She goes in, and the President is on the phone on the bed. She sees dishes on the bed and a glass with lipstick. The two start to touch each other sexually, but he remains on the phone. Norma Jeane is frightened of the talk of missiles, and she does not like him pushing her head toward his penis because she does not see herself as a call girl. She thinks that if it is a scene, she can play it as long as it is not happening in real life. She sees herself in an elevator with someone causing her to lose consciousness by cutting off her breathing. When she wakes, another man is on top of her having sex with her. She tries to say no. Suddenly, someone attempts to bring her to consciousness. One of the men slaps her. She wakes up in LA when the plane lands.

Whitey cries, and she believes it is out of pity for her. She knows she never has to ask him not to tell stories about her. She has a high fever, and when a doctor tells her she should be in the hospital, she refuses. Whitey has had to call Norma Jeane in sick numerous times. She knows how much Whitey adores her, and she leaves him some of her royalties in her will. Norma Jeane asks Whitey to promise that he will do her makeup one last time after she dies; he agrees.

Norma Jeane dreams she is pregnant with Kennedy’s baby, and that she might be charged with manslaughter because it is deformed. She wakes up from a dream that she was chloroformed by the President’s men like she had been at the hotel. One day, she is lying by the pool when the President’s brother-in-law, the President’s Pimp, comes up to her. He finds it hysterical that she is reading Chekhov. He tells her they want her to come sing “Happy Birthday” to the President. 

Marilyn is quite drunk and needs to be helped to the microphone. She sings “Happy Birthday” to Kennedy. She performs wonderfully, and she believes she is respected. She considers it to be the happiest day she has ever had.

Personified Death is coming to Marilyn’s door, but she does not know when. Cass has died. She learns from Eddy G that Cass left a memento for her. Her doorbell rings and she gets the message from Death. A delivery boy comes with the memento from Cass; it is the stuffed tiger. A card from Cass also lets her know that all the letters she has received from her father were really from him.

At night, someone comes to her as she lies naked in bed and puts chloroform to her face. She is then taken to a waiting room where Kennedy’s baby is aborted. She wakes up bleeding in her room and considers that it might as well have been a dream because no one would ever believe her. 

One night, the Sharpshooter comes into her room, and he does not know if he is there to protect against communism or against the President’s reputation. He gathers some evidence, and he realizes that her death will seem plausible because of her alcohol and drug abuse. He injects Nembutal into her heart. Norma Jeane relives multiple memories, and the novel ends with her mother showing her the picture of her father, who appears to be smiling at her.