‘America’s sweetheart’: exhibition explores Marilyn Monroe’s complex relationship to stardom

The new exhibition at LA’s Academy museum features some of the star’s most intimate belongings that have never been available for public viewing

There’s an unsettling moment in Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon , a new exhibition opening in Los Angeles this weekend, where some of the star’s last recorded words emanate from the gallery walls.

Her voice, gentle and unassuming, is taken from a restored audio recording of her final interview, published in Life magazine the day before she died.

“With fame, you can read about yourself and somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about you, for survival and living day to day with oneself,” Marilyn Monroe said in 1962. “I like people, but the public scares me.”

It’s a moment that encapsulates Monroe’s complex relationship to stardom and the tension between her public and private lives. And while the exhibition is packed with dramatic costumes and photography, it is the intimate items on display – letters, notes, personal effects – that leave the biggest impression.

The exhibition is one of several this year – including at the British Film Institute and National Portrait Gallery in London – to celebrate Monroe’s centenary, and curators worked together to ensure each was unique, says Sophia Serrano, who curated the Academy Museum event. This collection of outfits, belongings, documents and multimedia recordings is presented in the museum’s typically glossy style: an entrance hallway features a red carpet and huge video screen where Monroe blows the viewer kisses; her songs play overhead throughout the exhibition, and it’s decorated in red, with chandeliers and heart-shaped pillows – a nod to her performance of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend as well as studios “positioning her as America’s sweetheart”, says Serrano.

The pink dress she wore during that scene – which has rarely gone on public display, Serrano notes – has pride of place. Other items, including a dress from the film Love Happy as well as several letters and photos, have never been available for public viewing. Among the most memorable costumes are an elaborately sequined outfit with a big feathered tail from a charity appearance at Madison Square Garden, where Monroe rode in on an elephant and announced her new production company; on the other end of the spectrum are simple pyjamas from The Seven-Year Itch. The original white dress famously buffeted by the air over a subway grate in that film does not make an appearance, but there’s a replica by the same designer, William Travilla.

Hung on one wall is a pair of Monroe’s jeans, with a caption noting her role in popularizing women’s denim. They’re far less flashy than most of the outfits, but – along with a collection of her belongings, including a telephone, chair, marked-up scripts, a wine glass and address book – they offer a compelling look at Monroe’s private life. Particularly powerful are letters and notes written by and about Monroe. A pair of pages feature the actor’s free-associative musings: “I’m afraid to ever say anything about her for fear she will think I am trying to flatter her – thereby trying to trap her into liking me,” she has scribbled in a circled note about an unidentified person. Elsewhere, she writes: “I’m finding that sincerity is often taken for stupidity.” In a handwritten letter to the director John Huston, Monroe, who had an interest in psychoanalysis, declines a role in a film about Sigmund Freud , writing: “I have it on good authority that the Freud family does not approve of anyone making a picture of the life of Freud – so I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.”