ARTHUR MILLER AND MARILYN MONROE

I am interested in a different dimension of Arthur Miller's relationship with Marilyn Monroe, his narcissistic grandiosity and omnipotence.

It was a big deal for a famous playwrite to capture a prize like Marilyn Monroe.www.puretime08.me The sex goddess inspires fantasies of endless ecstasy. But deep down she was troubled and conflicted and in everyday life quite ordinary, the difference between fantasy and reality.

A genius like Arthur Miller has omnipotent fantasies--- he thinks he can 'cure' her with his intelligence and rationality. Wrong! Not even the top analysts of that day could get a handle on her.

Ralph Greenson was famous at the time; I studied his book on psychoanalysis. The book implied that he had the deepest insight imaginable, but when I read in the newspapers that he had a conflict of interest, using his relationship with her to get her to come to the movie set on time, or at all, I was disillusioned.

Even the analysts were dazzled by her. I used to fantasize that I could have cured her by insisting upon an intensive relationship and letting Hollywood and movies wait till she got more stable. She needed someone to care for her, deeply, and nobody did. With all his psychologic insight, Miller was too emotionally involved to be objective.

He was dumbstruck that she was not really the sexpot she appeared to be and he was dazzled by her celebrity, her charisma. She outshone him. I have a family snapshot of Miller and Monroe and his parents on my bulletin board. It was as if he married her to be able to pose in that family portrait.

Everybody looked ordinary, except for Marilyn, who just shone. "The Misfits" was pathetic, a combination of 10% profundity and 90% inanity. Miller joined forces with the Hollywood producers, exploiting her, making her into a commodity. She was actually an extraordinary person. He kept writing plays about her, justifying himself, which was not becoming.

Arthur Miller just died and the New York Times Magazine did a story about his relationship with Marilyn. Though he outlived her by many years, he never got over her. The American public will never get over her either, neither of them.