NEW YORK, (AFP) She was the prototype blonde bombshell and 50 years after her sudden death, the smoke from Marilyn Monroe’s one-woman sexual revolution has yet to clear. Monroe wasn’t the first Hollywood pin-up. Or even a natural blonde.But between the famous tight red sweater, the Playboy pictures, and that skirt blowing episode over a New [...]

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Marilyn Monroe’s blonde bombshell smolders on

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NEW YORK, (AFP) She was the prototype blonde bombshell and 50 years after her sudden death, the smoke from Marilyn Monroe’s one-woman sexual revolution has yet to clear. Monroe wasn’t the first Hollywood pin-up.

Or even a natural blonde.But between the famous tight red sweater, the Playboy pictures, and that skirt blowing episode over a New York subway grate, the young woman previously known as Norma Jeane Baker put America and the world in a fluster.

Enduring appeal: Marilyn Monroe passed away a half-century ago today. But in the 50 years since her death, the 1950's bombshell has become a pop culture phenomenon

It was a conquest that brought her celebrity marriages and fame far beyond her relatively modest list of film credits, creating a sex symbol revered by pop singers, actresses and fashionistas to this day.

“Marilyn Monroe has achieved an aura,” Goetz Grossmann, an executive producer involved in developing a film about the actress called “Blonde,” told AFP. “You cannot escape Marilyn Monroe. She’s reached iconic status.” Quite aside from biopics like the recent “My Week with Marilyn,” Hollywood, the music industry and fashion world remain intoxicated by the beauty who died at 36 in an apparent drug overdose suicide.

Creative director Joe Zee writes in Elle.com that “the original body-and-soul bombshell” continues to inspire catwalks.
Celebrities like Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson regularly channel the cleavage, blonde curls and white dresses that made Monroe the ultimate sex symbol.

Monroe’s enduring power of attraction might seem odd. Although she was scintillating in “Some Like it Hot” and a handful of other films, her Hollywood CV was slim, and her history of heartbreak and murky death are hardly to be recommended.
Behind it all there’s the sex appeal but even then, there’s a question: was Monroe’s seductive persona proof of independence, or the reflection of a woman being manipulated by men?

Lois Banner, author of the newly published biography “Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox,” says there’s no doubt that Monroe wore the pants when it came to her body.

“She created her career,” Banner said in a telephone interview. “She was extremely astute. She knew very much what she was doing and she went out on a limb…. The newspapers were calling out for a blonde bombshell and that’s what she did.”




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