Colin Clark’s memoir, My Week With Marilyn, chronicles his time as a ‘third assistant director’ (aka gofer) on the set of Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier’s 1956 movie, The Prince and the Showgirl.
Clark, 23-years-old at the time, was a devoted keeper of a journal. Keen to work in the film industry, he wangled a position on the Showgirl film-set through family connections – his parents were great friends of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. His journal documents the lead-up to filming, including arranging for a house for Monroe, who was traveling to England with new husband, Arthur Miller.
Now the curious thing about this memoir is that it is in two parts. The first part is titled The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, and is Clark’s journal entries over the duration of filming. It describes the progress of the film, Clark’s dalliance with a wardrobe assistant, and what became legendary clashes between Monroe and Olivier.
The second part, titled My Week with Marilyn, is Clark’s journal entries from the week when Monroe singled him out, and they spent time together. Although that week was relatively innocent, it’s not hard to understand why Clark has cashed in on saying that he ‘shared a bed with Marilyn’.
Clark’s observations are wonderfully frank and completely unaffected, and from the outset he states that Monroe is not his type, deeming her ‘…a bit too exaggerated’.
Her figure – and especially her bust – is fantastic but a little on the plump side. Problems – too much fakery: peroxide hair, dead white make-up, heavy lipstick, but that is her image. She looks confused too, lost, troubled. That’s the MM image too, I know, but even when she’s shut the door on the reporters, she still looks in distress, not just acting it.
And of Arthur Miller he says –
AM certainly doesn’t behave like America’s most eminent intellectual. More like an overgrown schoolboy.
Despite Clark’s doubts about Monroe’s talent, her continual tardiness to set, and fluffing of her lines, he says, ‘…when we see the rushes it is MM who lights up the screen. It is very bad luck on SLO.‘
As filming progressed, tensions mounted, particularly between Olivier and Monroe. Monroe expressed her worry about the film during the week that she made Clark her confidante, and he summed up the situation –
We are all trying to make a film which absolutely should not be made. That is why it is such agony for everyone. Agony for you – we can all see that – and agony for Laurence Olivier too. You are a great film star who needs to prove that you can act. Olivier is a great actor who wants to be a film star. For some reason somebody has chosen a script where you play an American chorus girl, which is the sort of part you’ve played before and does not challenge you at all, and Olivier plays a stuffy old man, which is the opposite of what he wants to be.
There are some wonderful insights into Olivier, Leigh and Monroe in this memoir. It is also an interesting reflection of its time, with Clark’s attitude toward women and sex very much what I image for the fifties (to this end, Clark appears as somewhat naive). However, unfortunately the glimpses of the big stars aren’t enough to save the tedium of the rest of Clark’s journal, particularly part one.
I saw the movie, My Week with Marilyn, starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn and Eddie Redmayne as Colin, back in 2011, and remember really enjoying it – a rare case of the film being better than the book. I was also prompted to watch some of the The Prince and the Showgirl – Clark is correct, Monroe shines and Olivier is wooden.
2.5/5 For fans only.
Large quantities of whiskey are consumed by Sir Laurence Olivier, but I’m pairing this book with the cocktail named after Marilyn (image).
My Week With Marilyn was my second book for Novella in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck.
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