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Tag: Marilyn Monroe

  • L.A. stopped a couple from demolishing Marilyn Monroe’s home. Now, they’re suing

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    A Brentwood couple is suing the city of Los Angeles and Mayor Karen Bass, claiming their constitutional rights were violated when city officials blocked them from demolishing the home where Marilyn Monroe died in 1962.

    In a 37-page complaint that accuses the city of collusion and bias, the lawsuit filed by homeowners Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank claims L.A. “deprived Plaintiffs of their intended demolition of the house and the use and enjoyment of their Property without any actual benefit to the public.”

    It’s yet another chapter in a saga surrounding the fate of the famous property, which began in 2023 when Milstein, a wealthy real estate heiress, and Bank, a reality TV producer with credits including “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” bought the home for $8.35 million. They own the property next door and hoped to tear down Monroe’s place to expand their estate.

    The pair quickly obtained demolition permits from the Department of Building and Safety, but once their plans became public, an outcry erupted. A legion of historians, Angelenos and Monroe fans claimed the 1920s haunt, where the actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of the city’s history.

    Councilmember Traci Park, who represents L.A.’s 11th Council District where the home is located, said she received hundreds of calls and emails urging her to protect it. In September 2023, she held a news conference dressed as Monroe — bright red lipstick, bobbing blond hair — urging the City Council to declare it a landmark.

    The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission started the landmark application process in January 2024, barring the owners from destroying the house in the meantime. L.A. City Council unanimously voted to designate it as a historic cultural monument a few months later, officially saving it from destruction.

    It’s not the first legal challenge brought by Milstein and Bank. The pair sued the city in 2024, accusing the city of “backdoor machinations” in preserving a house that doesn’t deserve to be a historic cultural monument.

    An L.A. Superior Court Judge threw out the suit in September 2025, calling it “an ill-disguised motion to win so they can demolish the home.”

    The latest lawsuit includes a variety of damages, claiming the property’s monument status has turned it into a tourist attraction, bringing trespassers who leap over the walls surrounding the property. In November, burglars broke into the home searching for memorabilia, the suit alleges.

    The lawsuit accuses the city of taking no efforts to stop trespassers and failing to compensate the owners for their loss of use and enjoyment of the property. It also notes that the homeowners offered to pay to relocate the home, but the city ignored them.

    An aerial view of the house in Brentwood where Marilyn Monroe died is seen on July 26, 2002.

    (Mel Bouzad / Getty Images)

    The feud has stirred up a larger conversation on what exactly is worth protecting in Southern California, a region loaded with architectural marvels and Old Hollywood haunts swirling with celebrity legend and gossip.

    Fans claim the house, located on 5th Helena Drive, is too iconic to be torn down. Monroe bought it for $75,000 in 1962 and died there six months later, the only home she ever owned by herself. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends here” — was adorned in tile on the front porch, adding to the property’s lore.

    Milstein and Bank claim it has been remodeled so many times over the years, with 14 different owners and more than a dozen renovation permits issued over the last 60 years, that it bears no resemblance to its former self. Some Brentwood locals consider it a nuisance because fans and tour buses flock to the address for pictures, even though the only thing visible from the street is the privacy wall.

    “There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” their previous lawsuit claimed.

    With their latest lawsuit, Milstein and Bank are seeking a court order allowing them to demolish the house and compensation for the decline in property value after the city’s decision to declare it a monument.

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    Jack Flemming

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  • Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe, Charli XCX Movies, 13 Scottish Films Set for Glasgow Festival

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    The Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) unveiled the full lineup for its 22nd edition on Wednesday, including films starring the likes of Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe, Jude Law, and Willem Dafoe, twice. The festival in Scotland will also feature 13 Scottish films and celebrate the life and work of Marilyn Monroe 100 years after her birth with “a string of the icon’s classic hits shown on the big screen,” organizers said.

    Taking place Feb. 25-March 8, the GFF will host 126 films, including 16 world, European and International premieres, 68 U.K. premieres, and 18 Scottish premieres, with titles from 44 countries, including 13 from Scotland. As previously revealed, Scottish films will open and close the festival, with the U.K. premiere of Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, executive produced by Emma Thompson, kicking off the fest, while James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’, wrapping it up. Both films were shot in Glasgow.

    This year’s edition marks Paul Gallagher’s first edition as head of program. 

    Among the GFF 2026 highlights are the U.K. premieres of such movies as Rebuilding starring Josh O’Connor, high-fashion world film Couture featuring Angelina Jolie, relationship drama Erupcja led by Charli XCX, political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin with Jude Law, Paul Dano and Alicia Vikander, as well as Late Fame and The Birthday Party, both starring Dafoe.
     
    The Scottish premieres set for Glasgow include Jim Jarmusch’s Venice Golden Lion winner Father Mother Sister Brother with Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett, Mark Jenkin’s mysterious drama Rose of Nevada with George MacKay and Callum Turner, and dark thriller The Good Boy starring Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham.
     
    Among the Scottish films in the program is the world premiere of Molly vs The Machines, “the story of a heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s death,” and the U.K. premieres of dark comedy The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, starring Peter Mullan, and Midwinter Break, written by Bernard MacLaverty and starring Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville.

    GFF26 will also showcase 50 films not in the English language, with a total of 44 languages being represented in the lineup. Speaking of languages: The Gaelic language is represented at the fest with the world premiere of Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People), a documentary by Jack Archer about Scotland’s tradition of Gaelic psalm singing.

    Meanwhile, Glasgow’s “Marilyn Monroe 100” program will be screening a selection of her films, including noir film The Asphalt Jungle (1950), iconic crime comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), and the musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). 

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    Georg Szalai

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  • Manhattan’s Jewel Box Celebrates 95 Sparkling Years

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    New York’s grande dame, The Pierre, knows how to throw a soirée. Last night, the elegant Taj Hotel celebrated 95 years as a beacon of Upper East Side glamour with a ‘Red Diamond’ gala that brought together residents, diplomats, stars and influencers for an unforgettable evening of vintage Manhattan magic.

    Nearly 500 guests, from silver-haired luminaries to fresh-faced Gen Z tastemakers, donned black tie finery to toast The Pierre’s storied history in its famous ballroom. Sipping champagne beneath glittering chandeliers, partygoers were transported to a more gracious era, when the hotel played host to everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and Aristotle Onassis to Audrey Hepburn.

    The entertainment was a love letter to old New York: A Marilyn Monroe impersonator cooed while Deanna First sketched partygoers and professional ballroom dancers swirled across the stage in a swish of satin and sequins. Historic treasures, like archival photos and a $195,000 0.6-carat pink diamond, were displayed without fanfare (or security).

    Getty Images Deanna First.

    But while the gala paid homage to The Pierre’s glamorous past, the crowd reflected its vibrant present. Among those spotted in the sea of tuxedos and gowns: hotel residents, foreign dignitaries, reality TV stars, Instagram celebrities and even the odd baby or two nestled in couture-clad arms. The evening proved that after nearly a century, The Pierre can still create indelible Manhattan moments.

    Courtesy of Lola Tash Lola Tash and Jessica Wang.

    “I was transported back to the galas of the Gilded Age,” Lola Tash told Observer. The Canadian actress and brains behind the satirical, relatable meme account My Therapist Says was “reminded once more why New York is magical.”

    Getty Images Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe.

    “The Pierre is my American Home away from home,” Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe told Observer. His godmother lived in The Pierre, the prince said, noting “the happiest of my memories are right here” and calling the historic property “the hotel love of my life.”

    Courtesy of Grace Aki Grace Aki.

    Experiencing the hotel’s cinematic history firsthand was a highlight for Grace Aki. The gallery of treasures glowing behind glass displays made the night “all the more special,” Aki told Observer.

    “Like stepping into history,” was how Viola Manuela Ceccarini described the event. “The elegance, the legacy and the energy in the room—witnessing generations of excellence converge under that red diamond, a symbol of timeless prestige and the enduring spirit of New York.”

    Courtesy of Lori Altermann The star of the show poses with Lori Altermann.

    “Everywhere I turn, I see New York’s elite—beautiful celebrities and even Marilyn Monroe!” quipped Lori Altermann. “The fashion, the food, the hotel—everything is fabulous!” Altermann told Observer. “It’s a celebration of luxury,” said Namani Shqipe.

    Getty Images A Rolls-Royce awaits.
    Getty Images Guests enjoyed ice-cold Grey Goose Altius.
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    Getty Images Monica Danae Ricketts.
    Getty Images Evie Evangelo.
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    Getty Images Daria Matkova.
    Getty Images ‘Queen of Versailles’ Jackie Siegel.
    Getty Images Lorna Luft and Jill Martin.
    Getty Images Ramona Singer.
    Getty Images Andy Yu.
    Getty Images Sara Fivessi.
    Getty Images Kate Saucedo and Dymond Veve.
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    Merin Curotto

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  • From Taylor Swift to Marilyn Monroe: A Brief History of Cinematic Showgirls

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    In a sense, Taylor Swift’s Showgirl era actually began two albums ago—with “You’re on Your Own Kid,” a revealing track on her 10th studio record, Midnights (2022). In the song, Swift charts her coming of age in the spotlight: first escaping her small town by writing music, then searching parties full of “better bodies / just to learn that my dreams aren’t rare,” and ultimately deciding that “there were pages turned with the bridges burned” during her so-called cancellation chapter. It’s where she, Swift, first sang of the friendship bracelets that became currency on her Eras tour—even helping to bring her now fiancé, Travis Kelce, into focus. All of it would coalesce into the biggest creative chapter of Swift’s career.

    Two years, $2 billion in ticket sales, and 11 reprisals of “You’re on Your Own Kid” (the most repeated surprise song on her live set list) later, Swift promises a look “behind the curtain” of that blockbuster tour with her new album, The Life of a Showgirl.

    Look no further than the cover art—shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot, who also worked on her Reputation (2017) imagery—meant to represent Swift’s mood getting into the bath after a night of performing during the Eras tour. “When all this has gone down, you won’t be able to get to bed until 4 in the morning,” she said while announcing the album on Kelce’s New Heights podcast, “but you had to jump through 50 million hoops in this obstacle course that is your show. And you did it. You got two more in a row, but you did it tonight.” Swift added, “This album isn’t really about what happened to me on stage. It’s about what I was going through offstage.”

    That’s also true of most great showgirl movies, where Swift has been known to find inspiration. In fact, three of cinema’s most famous showgirls—as played by Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls, Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl, and Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl—tend to foreshadow The Life of a Showgirl as first outlined in “You’re on Your Own Kid,” and hint at what may come on the twelfth album.

    The small-town “Daisy May” who longed for stardom in “You’re on Your Own Kid” sounds a bit like Nomi Malone, the bright-eyed heroine of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, who hitches a ride to Las Vegas to become a dancer. Once there, she’s deceived and betrayed in both business and love. All of Nomi’s naivete is stripped away in her pursuit of fame. And she abandons her once steadfast ideals to replace Gina Gerhson’s veteran showgirl Cristal Connors, whose line, “There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you,” sounds like a lyric straight out of “Nothing New,” in which Swift and Phoebe Bridgers sing about the passage of time in the spotlight. “I know someday I’m gonna meet her, it’s a fever dream / The kind of radiance you only have at 17,” the two sing of their imaginary successor. “She’ll know the way and then she’ll say she got the map from me / I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep.”

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • Inside the Photo Shoot That Made Marilyn Monroe an American Icon

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    “Clothes are the enemy!” a waitress tells Tom Ewell’s hapless and lusty Richard Sherman in The Seven Year Itch. “Without clothes, there’d be no sickness and no war!” There also would be no 52-foot-tall billboard above Loew’s State Theatre picturing Marilyn Monroe and her wind-blown white dress—which seared the image into the collective consciousness of passersby on 45th and Broadway, and transformed it into a lasting piece of American iconography.

    Photographer Sam Shaw with Marilyn Monroe, Los Angeles, California, 1954.

    Photograph by Bill Thomas.

    That “shot seen around the world,” as The Hollywood Reporter columnist Irving Hoffman described it at the time, was the brainchild of one of Monroe’s favorite photographers, Sam Shaw. Though Shaw died in 1999, his daughters Edie and Meta Shaw and his granddaughter Melissa Stevens have gathered his posthumous collection of Monroe photographs, memories, and ephemera for Dear Marilyn: The Unseen Letters and Photographs, publishing this month from ACC Art Books.

    ‘Dear Marilyn’ by Sam Shaw

    Shaw grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and spent his early career working as a courtroom artist and political cartoonist. He moved on to photojournalism and eventually set photography, meeting Monroe for the first time while shooting postproduction stills for Panic in the Streets, directed by Elia Kazan, in 1950. Monroe, Shaw writes, was Kazan’s “sweetheart” during the filming of Kazan’s 1952 Viva Zapata!, and Shaw took her photo as a favor for the director. In the book, he remembers her wearing his own sports shirt, knotted at the waist, with a pair of the signature jeans she picked up at an Army Navy store on Western Avenue in Los Angeles. Monroe told him she’d wear her jeans into the ocean and let them dry in the sun so they’d fit her body.

    While those photographs are lost to the maw of time (or possibly, as Shaw posits, to the personal collection of Edward Steichen, who was then MoMA’s curator of photography), the encounter kicked off a decade-long friendship and creative partnership. Shaw would capture Monroe during some of her most pivotal moments both on and off the clock: “lovely, joyous moments in the prime of her life,” he writes in the introduction to his images. We see Monroe beaming while on the phone with Arthur Miller, before he became her third husband; the pair of them at their Connecticut home (images that served as source imagery for corresponding scenes in Netflix’s 2022 Blonde, starring Ana de Armas); Monroe in Richard Avedon’s studio; Monroe at the premiere of The Prince and the Showgirl at Radio City Music Hall, giddily emerging from a bubble bath on set, and applying false eyelashes backstage.

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    Keziah Weir

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  • Sabrina Carpenter Pays Fashionable Homage to Cher, Britney Spears, Madonna, and Marilyn—In One Night

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    Sabrina Carpenter is the undisputed queen of vintage. Her musical epic, punctuated by her global hit “Espresso,” never ceases to embrace the codes of yesteryear, as in the case of her latest single, “Tears,” with its ’80s disco pop sounds, which she performed on stage at the VMAs 2025 last Sunday. For her performance, Carpenter first appeared on stage wearing a fringed top adorned with rhinestones and a matching miniskirt. But halfway through, the singer changed up her look. The new outfit? A diamond-spangled halter bra and black sequined mini-shorts. It was a more daring and sexy ensemble, not to mention a nod to a pop star from the 2000s: Britney Spears.

    Sabrina Carpenter on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards 2025 on September 7, 2025 in New York.

    Christopher Polk/Getty Images

    Christopher Polk/Getty Images

    In 2001, Spears wore a similar bra designed by Bob Mackie for a performance of “Baby One More Time” featured in an HBO documentary about her Dream Within a Dream Tour. Originally, the lingerie piece was designed for the Las Vegas revue Jubilee! in 1981. However, the bra sold at auction this year for $78,000 (over 66,200 euros); Sabrina Carpenter’s version being a replica, not the original.

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    Carpenter’s vintage fashion marathon and tribute—not only to Mackie but another foundational pop diva—continued outside the musical ceremony. And yes, you’d have thought that after winning three awards, including Album of the Year for Short n’ Sweet, the singer would be tuckered out, but no, far from it. Carpenter celebrated her victory at her own “Sabrina54” afterparty, and donned another look straight from Cher‘s archives for the occasion.

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    Olivia Batoul

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  • Marilyn Monroe’s L.A. home escapes demolition — again

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    For the second time in two years, Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home has been saved from destruction.

    Last summer, the Spanish Colonial-style hacienda was saved by the L.A. City Council, which voted unanimously to designate the house as a historic cultural monument, halting its impending demolition. This time around, it was rescued by an L.A. Superior Court judge, who rejected a legal challenge from the homeowners claiming the city’s landmark designation violated their right to raze the residence.

    Judge James C. Chalfant upheld the City Council’s decision — and the home’s monument status — in a brief filed Tuesday.

    It could be the final chapter to a years-long saga with plenty of Hollywood twists and turns. On one side are the homeowners, Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank, who are fighting for the right to tear the property down. On the other are legions of historians, Angelenos and Monroe fans, who claim the 1920s haunt, where the actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of celebrity history.

    The feud stirred up a larger conversation on what exactly is worth protecting in Southern California, a region loaded with architectural marvels and Old Hollywood haunts swirling with celebrity legend and gossip.

    Fans claim the house, located on 5th Helena Drive, is too iconic to be torn down. Monroe bought it for $75,000 in 1962 and died there six months later, the only home she ever owned by herself. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends here” — was adorned in tile on the front porch, adding to the property’s lore.

    An aerial view of the house where Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood.

    (Mel Bouzad / Getty Images)

    The homeowners claim it has been remodeled so many times over the years, with 14 different owners and over a dozen renovation permits issued over the last 60 years, that it bears no resemblance to its former self. Some Brentwood locals consider it a nuisance, since fans and tour buses flock to the address for pictures, even though the only thing visible from the street is the privacy wall.

    “There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” Milstein and Bank claimed in their lawsuit.

    Milstein, a wealthy real estate heiress, and Bank, a reality TV producer with credits including “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” bought the home for $8.35 million in 2023 with plans to tear it down. They own the property next door and hoped to expand their estate.

    The pair obtained demolition permits from the Department of Building and Safety, but once their plans became public, an outcry erupted.

    Councilmember Traci Park, who represents L.A.’s 11th council district where the home is located, said she received hundreds of calls and emails urging her to protect it. In September 2023, she held a press conference dressed as Monroe — bright red lipstick, bobbing blond hair — urging the City Council to declare it a landmark.

    The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission started the landmark application process in January 2024, barring the owners from destroying the house in the meantime. A few weeks later, Milstein pleaded her case to the commission.

    “We have watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours. And it is not a historic cultural monument,” she said at the time.

    The couple sued the city a few months later, accusing them of unconstitutional actions and “backdoor machinations” in trying to preserve a house that doesn’t qualify as a historic cultural monument. Judge Chalfant denied the claim, calling it an “ill-disguised motion to win so they can demolish the home.”

    Milstein and Bank, who have previously offered to move the home so they can expand their own estate without destroying Monroe’s, could appeal the judge’s decision.

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    Jack Flemming

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  • Rae Gives Del Rey: The “Diet Pepsi” Video

    Rae Gives Del Rey: The “Diet Pepsi” Video

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    Although Addison Rae might be Charli XCX’s number one fan (though it sometimes seems like the other way around), it is Lana Del Rey who she most closely mirrors on her latest single, “Diet Pepsi.” If the title alone wasn’t a dead giveaway of that similarity (echoing Del Rey’s 2012 track, “Cola”), then the music video itself is sure to emphasize the LDR influence on the song. Not just lyrically, but also aesthetically.

    Directed by Sean Price Williams (who also recently directed Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”), the video follows Rae in the front seat (and sometimes the back seat) of her boyfriend’s car. Played by Drew Van Acker, who Rae said reminded her of Tyler Durden a.k.a. Brad Pitt from Fight Club when she first saw a picture of him, his James Dean thing is definitely what one could call “Del Rey-approved” (she, too, secured her own version of Dean via Bradley Soileau in the “Born to Die” and “Blue Jeans” videos). Along with the entire “riding in Daddy’s car” visual that “happens to be” très “Shades of Cool.” Because, while Charli XCX might be known for constantly offering up songs about wheels of some sort (hear: “Vroom Vroom,” “Dreamer,” “White Mercedes,” “Crash,” “Speed Drive,” etc.), it is Del Rey who imbues them with a “quintessential American” meaning (which, alas, XCX is incapable of due to her Britishness). Emphasizing that the car is the thing in the U.S. The place where everything happens, including, of course, a budding romance-turned-carnal sex act. Particularly during the fifties and sixties era that Rae gravitates toward in this video (and that Del Rey gravitates toward all the time).

    The black-and-white “time capsule” (especially for someone so “TikTok-oriented”) is further lent its mid-twentieth century Americana feel by commencing with Rae opening a tape case and slipping it into the car’s tape deck as an I Love Lucy-adjacent font appears onscreen to tell us the song’s name: “Diet Pepsi.” Which is fitting since Rae can, in this scenario, be called the “diet” version of Del Rey in that she’s Gen Z to her millennial, therefore far more diluted in artistic value and originality. And while Del Rey iconically opened “Cola” with the declaration, “My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola,” Rae chooses to mention Diet Pepsi in the second verse with, “Sitting on his lap, sippin’ Diet Pepsi.” And yes, like Del Rey, she also mentions this cola just once despite naming a song after it.

    In the intro verse, Rae also immediately sets the Del Reyian stage via the lines, “My boy’s a winner, he loves the game/My lips reflect off his cross gold chain/I like the way he’s telling me/My ass looks good in these ripped blue jeans/My cheeks are red like cherries in the spring/Body’s a work of art you’d die to see.” Del Rey, in fact, uses one of those exact terms on “Black Beauty”: “I keep my lips red/To seem like cherries in the spring.”

    As for the visual nods to fifties and sixties-era car culture, wherein many teenagers (read: teenage girls…since boys never have to bear the same “stain” after having sex) would lose their “innocence”—this includes the common term of “necking” in the back seat—it’s also present in Rae’s chorus, “When we drive in your car, I’m your baby (so sweet)/Losing all my innocence in the back seat/Say you love, say you love, say you love me.” Of course, the girl in question would likely only do these “dirty” acts in the back seat in the hope that the object of her desire would say just that: “I love you.” As for Rae’s illicit tryst with the boy she speaks of in the song (a boy who, if the casting choice is anything to go by, is much older [also Del Rey-approved]), it’s additionally highlighted in the lyrics, “Break all the rules ’til we get caught/Fog up the windows in the parking lot/Summer love (ah, ah), sexy.”

    With regard to describing, euphemistically, “losing all [her] innocence in the back seat,” not only does it channel Del Rey on “Gods and Monsters” repeating, “It’s innocence lost, innocence lost” (herself riffing on John Milton, who famously declared in Paradise Lost, “Innocence, once lost, can never be regained”), it also harkens back to the Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny Zuko (John Travolta) dynamic in Grease. While Zuko is the proverbial leather jacket-wearing bad boy with a convertible, Sandy is the virginal girl he tries to “defile” in it while the two are at the drive-in movie theater (the car, again, being like a “bedroom on wheels,” particularly for teenagers back then). Unlike Rae, however, Sandy isn’t amenable to losing her innocence in the front or back seat, berating Danny when he keeps trying to “do sex” with her, “You think I’m gonna stay here with you in this sin wagon?” before running off and leaving Danny “stranded at the drive-in” (even though he’s the one with the wheels to leave).

    Rae, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to stay in Van Acker’s “sin wagon” all night. Only getting out, at one point, to showcase some scenes of herself in a bikini as an American flag materializes to drape over herself—again, Lana Del Rey-style. In fact, it was Barrie-James O’Neill, Del Rey’s ex-boyfriend, who succinctly stated, “You American girls walk around as if your pussies tasted like Pepsi-Cola [yes, he inspired the lyric], as if you’d wrap yourself into an American flag to sleep.” Del Rey speaks of “sleeping” in something entirely different on “Fucked My Way to the Top,” commanding, “Lay me down tonight in my diamonds and pearls.” The motif of diamonds is often present in her lyrics; case in point, “National Anthem,” during which she speaks in the same kind of baby voice as Rae on “Diet Pepsi” by cooing such “isms” as, “Um, do you think you’ll buy me lots of diamonds?” and “Everybody knows it, it’s a fact/Kiss, Kiss.”

    Rae also gives the “Daddy’s girl” aura Del Rey perfected in the “Ride” video by describing, “Sitting on his lap, sippin’ Diet Pepsi/I write my name with lipstick on your chest/I leave a mark so you know I’m the best.” Here, too, one can’t help but think of Del Rey assuring, “Baby, you the best” on “Summertime Sadness.”

    What’s more, in the spirit of Del Rey, the imagery that Rae wields throughout the limited location video is a postmodern parade, from the image of a hand wiping steam away from the window (Titanic-style) to Rae going wide-eyed over a banana split (innuendo indeed)—while doing the splits, naturally. To boot, no nod to Del Rey, ergo Americana, would be complete without draping the aforementioned American flag over herself at some point. Or, for that matter, finding herself in a convenience store (another favorite milieu of Del Rey’s in both song and photoshoot output) where she pulls a Diet Pepsi out of the refrigerator section and sips on it—which, obviously, leads everything to turn into color (sort of like how it did for Betty Parker [Joan Allen] in Pleasantville when she had her first orgasm).

    During one of these final color moments, Rae is also shown biting on a pearl necklace “Lana-style,” which, in reality, is Marilyn Monroe-style—with one of her most famous photoshoots by Bert Stern finding her posed on the beach with pearls all around her and, in one photo, biting the necklace.

    But Williams doesn’t cite Monroe or Del Rey as influences on his aesthetic choices. However, his eye was key to assembling the necessary “collage of homages” that gives “Diet Pepsi” its Del Rey feel (particularly “Shades of Cool” and “Music To Watch Boys To” [namely, when Rae dons headphones…even if the earpieces aren’t crafted in the shape of flowers]). But at the base of that is what Williams characterizes as: “Visually, Russ Meyer, plus the driving sequence in Fellini’s Toby Dammit, plus Bruce Conner’s Breakaway equals ‘Diet Pepsi.’” And, of course, like any adept payer of respect to postmodernism, Rae also weighed in on one of the most important sartorial decisions: wearing a cone bra. For, as she herself mentioned, “I love Madonna so it only felt right to include a cone bra in the video.”

    However, while Madonna’s influence always ends up creeping into every subsequent “pop girlie’s” music and videos, it is Del Rey that outshines all other influences on “Diet Pepsi.” Which works out since the world is apparently in need of a new “sultry soda song” after Del Rey has said she will no longer perform “Cola” after the whole Harvey Weinstein thing…

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Sabrina Carpenter Does Dress Homage Right—By Not Wearing the Original

    Sabrina Carpenter Does Dress Homage Right—By Not Wearing the Original

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    Despite the numerous reports that, for her red carpet appearance at this year’s MTV VMAs, Sabrina Carpenter wore the original Bob Mackie dress famously showcased by Madonna at the 1991 Oscars (where her ensemble was complemented by a white stole and an almost white Michael Jackson), it was actually an identical sample gown from the Mackie archive. Which is just the first step in how to succeed in the art of “paying respect” to an iconic look without offending. Unlike Kim Kardashian, who remains the “gold standard” for how to decimate the integrity of a dress originally worn by someone far more legendary.

    And we’re not just talking about Marilyn Monroe’s scandalous Jean Louis number (made more scandalous by seductively singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to JFK while wearing it), but also the very Marilyn-inspired gown that Madonna paraded in ’91. Because, yes, Kardashian additionally sought to ruin not only said Mackie dress in AHS: Delicate (by going on about a dress that looks nothing like it to her character’s client, Anna Victoria Alcott [Emma Roberts]), but also the song Madonna performed at that Oscars ceremony, “Sooner or Later” (which won the Academy Award that night in the category of Best Original Song). This by repeatedly singing it with Anna as the two look at themselves in the mirror and fantasize about Anna’s eventual big Oscar win.

    As for Marilyn being patently more “icon” than Kim, Madonna, too, is more legendary and influential than Carpenter ever will be. Even if the duo has occasionally been aesthetically compared to one another—with Madonna’s “curtain bangs” look at the LadyLand 2024 event for NYC Pride getting her linked to Carpenter more than the other way around. And yet, the VMAs is hardly the first time that Carpenter has paid tribute (sartorial or otherwise) to the Queen of Pop. For she also stepped out earlier this year (at Vogue World in Paris) in another dress that Madonna wore for the purposes of gracing Glamour’s cover in December of 1990. Specifically, a Michael Kors (that’s right, Madonna “High Fashion” Ciccone once deigned to wear Kors) beaded rhinestone slip dress.

    Indeed, it seems that Carpenter has a certain fondness for M’s early 90s (but pre-Erotica) fashion era. Perhaps because M herself was heavily embodying the look of Marilyn Monroe at that time (again, without fucking up one of the icon’s dresses like the abovementioned Kardashian did). And yes, obviously Carpenter is tapping into both women for her “effortless pastiche” purposes (something that also extended to emulating Britney Spears while she performed a medley at the 2024 VMAs).

    However, Carpenter was also deft in her tribute because for two key reasons: 1) she didn’t try to exactly replicate it with the same jewelry, pearl-studded handbag, fur stole and satin heels and 2) it was sanctioned by none other than the original wearer herself. Even if, like Blake Lively donning Britney’s Versace butterfly dress from 2002, the gown was reportedly acquired through Tab Vintage. According to Carpenter’s stylist, Jared Ellner, “Madonna still has the custom gown Bob Mackie made for her in her archive, but the other sample piece is the [dress] I believe we have.” And, for those wondering how the dress managed to “fit” Carpenter, whose height is notoriously short (“five feet, to be exact”), a closer look at where the gown falls shows it pooling around her ankles, bolstered by extremely high platform heels (in white, of course).

    Though, to be fair, Madonna isn’t much taller, with her average height being cited at around five-foot-three or five-foot-four. Which is precisely why she once said, “I’ve always wanted to be taller. I feel like a shrimp, but that’s the way it goes. I’m five-foot four-and-a-half-inches—that’s actually average. Everything about me is average.” This sentiment, in turn, also prompting her to declare, “My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre.” To be sure, if Madonna wasn’t a much “bitterer” person than Carpenter, she might have called one of her own albums Short n’ Sweet long before the former Disney star decided to. But no, Madonna’s not really bitter, once quipping during her 1993 The Girlie Show tour, “Life’s too short to be bitter…I’m too short to be bitter!” And besides, how could she be when considering the ongoing, far-reaching influence she still so clearly has on each new generation of pop stars?

    For, yes, despite Carpenter’s inherent Gen Z limitations in terms of having good pop culture taste, she still understands the meaning of Madonna. That much was made apparent when she performed a cover of “Like A Virgin” during several dates on her Emails I Can’t Send Tour. In a June 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter would also mention Madonna as an essential lesson for any “Intro to Pop” class she might teach, commenting, “Those were some of the first pop songs I ever heard and they raised me when I was five and helped me find my own version of that. This would be a really long course. I should never teach a course.”

    But, actually, maybe she should. Not only Intro to Pop for the daft Gen Z ilk, but also Intro to How to Properly Pay Tribute in Someone Else’s Iconic Dress. Kardashian really could have used that class before the Met Gala in 2022. Or even before she decided to dress like Madonna at the ’91 Oscars herself for one of her many Halloween costumes in 2017.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Marilyn Monroe’s Former Los Angeles Home Declared A Historic Monument To Save It From Demolition – KXL

    Marilyn Monroe’s Former Los Angeles Home Declared A Historic Monument To Save It From Demolition – KXL

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    FILE – The backyard of the home where Marilyn Monroe lived is shown after she was found dead in Hollywood, August 5, 1962. The Los Angeles City Council voted to declare the home where Marilyn Monroe briefly lived and died a historic cultural monument in order to save it from demolition by its owners. (AP Photo/Harold Filan, File)

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fans of Marilyn Monroe have won a battle to preserve her mark on Los Angeles and are a step closer to seeing a towering statue of the silver screen icon remain in Palm Springs.

    The Los Angeles home where Monroe briefly lived and died in 1962 was declared a historic cultural monument on Wednesday, while a Palm Springs planning commission decision boosted chances that a 26-foot-tall statue called “Forever Marilyn” will stay there.

    The historic designation follows a lengthy battle over the home.

    The current owners live next door and wanted to raze it.

    Their attorney asserts that remodels by 14 previous owners have left nothing reflecting Monroe’s time there.

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    Grant McHill

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  • Conservation group fighting to save Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles home

    Conservation group fighting to save Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles home

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    Conservation group fighting to save Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles home – CBS News


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    The current owners of Marilyn Monroe’s old Los Angeles home want to tear the building down. But a conservation group is hoping to save it and get the building labeled a landmark. Carter Evans has the story.

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  • The Most Iconic Old Hollywood Restaurants in L.A.

    The Most Iconic Old Hollywood Restaurants in L.A.

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    From its star-studded residents to its rich history, Los Angeles is a city of icons. The glitz and glamour of Old Hollywood never loses its charm, and several restaurants, hotels and bars have made it their mission to maintain that sense of timeless class and elegance. From restaurants with vintage-inspired decor and black-and-white photos to dim-lit bars that have been serving stiff drinks since the 1950s, L.A. is home to several historic hot spots that have long attracted loyal locals and first-time visitors alike.

    Many of L.A.’s most legendary eateries have welcomed icons such as Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Elizabeth Taylor, giving patrons the chance to enjoy a piece of the past as they indulge in comforting cuisine and fine wines. Several of these spots still attract modern-day celebs, so don’t be surprised if you catch a glimpse of your favorite actor or musician while sipping on a glass of red at Dan Tana’s or enjoying breakfast at Chateau Marmont. Whether you’re in the mood for the city’s best dirty martini or want to dine like Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin with a hearty plate of pasta or freshly shucked oysters, these are the most iconic Old Hollywood restaurants in L.A.

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    Allie Lebos

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  • Homeowners sue L.A. for right to demolish Marilyn Monroe’s house

    Homeowners sue L.A. for right to demolish Marilyn Monroe’s house

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    In January, fans and conservationists celebrated when the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission recommended landmark status for Marilyn Monroe’s home, a crucial step in saving the residence from being demolished.

    The new owners of the Brentwood property were less ecstatic. They sued the city of L.A. on Monday for the right to demolish it, claiming that city officials acted unconstitutionally in their efforts to designate the home as a landmark and accusing them of “backdoor machinations” in trying to preserve a house that doesn’t meet the criteria for status as a historic cultural monument.

    The lawsuit comes from heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, who bought the Spanish Colonial-style home last summer for $8.35 million and immediately laid out plans to raze it. They owned the house next door and hoped to combine the two properties to expand their place, according to the lawsuit.

    Monroe bought the house in 1962 for $75,000 and died there six months later after an apparent overdose at the age of 36. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends here” — was adorned in tile on the front porch, though its origin is a mystery.

    An aerial view of the house where Marilyn Monroe died is seen on July 26, 2002, in Brentwood.

    (Mel Bouzad / Getty Images)

    Fans and conservationists claim the residence is a part of Hollywood history and a physical reminder of Monroe’s legacy.

    Milstein and Bank disagree. Their lawsuit claims that the home has had 14 owners since Monroe’s death and has been substantially altered, with over a dozen permits issued for various remodels over the last 60 years.

    “There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” the lawsuit says.

    The house isn’t visible from the street, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a tourist hot spot. Fans and tour buses flock to the property to snap pictures of the privacy wall, which the lawsuit claims is a nuisance to the neighborhood.

    The battle over the home has been brewing since September 2023, when the city issued a demolition permit to Milstein and Bank on Sept. 7. The public outcry was swift, and L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park said she received hundreds of emails and phone calls urging her office to initiate the process of declaring the home a historic cultural monument in order to save it.

    Park held a news conference titled “Marilyn Monroe Home Preservation” the next day, delivering an impassioned speech while wearing red lipstick and short blond hair in a nod to Monroe.

    After the speech, the City Council voted to begin the landmark consideration process, nullifying the demolition permits. The council will vote to officially on whether to declare the house a historic cultural monument this summer.

    The goal of the lawsuit is to cancel that vote and restore the right to demolish the property.

    While addressing the Cultural Heritage Commission in January, Milstein suggested relocating the home rather than designating it a landmark. It’s unclear whether that option is still possible.

    “In the eight years that we have lived next door, we have seen the property change owners two times,” Milstein said while addressing the commission. “We have watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours. And it is not a historic cultural monument.”

    The process of protecting potentially historic homes has been a hot topic in recent weeks. It most recently surfaced when Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger demolished the Zimmerman House, a beloved Midcentury home designed by Craig Ellwood, to build a modern mansion in its place.

    The demolition sparked an outcry among locals and architecture enthusiasts, who questioned why the city allowed the Midcentury “time capsule” to be torn down.

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    Jack Flemming

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  • The Irony of “I’m Just Ken” Grafting “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” at the 2024 Oscars

    The Irony of “I’m Just Ken” Grafting “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” at the 2024 Oscars

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    There is a long tradition of women emulating Marilyn Monroe’s famed performance of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In fact, it is very much a women’s song and visual (even if directed by Howard Hawks) that speaks on things being more satisfying (and enduring) than men. A sardonic sendup of the material girl trope—which is how many men still view women, seventy-one-ish years later (the film was released in July of 1953). This being, of course, why Madonna chose to tongue-in-cheekly reuse it in her 1985 video for “Material Girl.”

    In fact, after that, Madonna not only secured her position as the Queen of Postmodernism (sorry Ariana Grande), but, in many ways, prompted a new generation to forget that Marilyn Monroe was the original pink gown-wearer traipsing about on a pink staircase as tuxedoed men fawned over and followed her around with rebuffed gifts. Granted, Carol Channing (a gay icon with a decided contempt for gays) was the first to bring Lorelei Lee to life on Broadway in 1949, but Monroe eclipsed that performance with her celluloid prowess. 

    Thus, the eternal Hollywood love of paying homage to that segment of the film that helped launch Monroe into “instant icon” status. After “Material Girl,” the next most memorable homage would become Nicole Kidman’s. Specifically, as Satine in 2001’s Moulin Rouge! (during which she incorporates the verse from “Material Girl,” “‘Cause we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl”). Many other musicians, including Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, have referenced/performed the song and visual as well, but not until 2020’s Birds of Prey (which would also feature a riff on “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend” by Megan Thee Stallion and Normani called “Diamonds” for the soundtrack) was the re-creation of the performance so blatant again. Uncannily enough, Barbie’s star (one hates to break it to Ryan Gosling), Margot Robbie—as Harley Quinn—would be the one to engage in her own macabre sendup of the original. For added Hollywood incestuousness (or “six degrees of separation,” if you prefer), Ewan McGregor (who plays Christian in Moulin Rouge!) appears in the scene with her in his own modern take on the 1950s-era tuxedo (this one without tails).

    Indeed, he was the one who, as Roman Sionis/Black Mask, caused her to hallucinate such a fantasy in the first place after slapping her with enough force. This after taunting her about losing the Joker’s favor in the wake of their breakup, “For all your noise and bluster, you’re just a silly little girl with no one around to protect her.” The accusation of being a silly little girl (when not instead substituted by the venomous “epithets” of “bitch” and/or “slut”) remains one of the most effortless ways for a man to demean a woman. And demeanment is, unfortunately, on the rise rather than on the decline—a reality that Ken brings to life onscreen with his inferiority complex that ends up causing him to destroy the matriarchal utopia of Barbie Land. 

    The reason? He wants attention, of course (not to mention praise and acknowledgement for doing nothing). For when “silly little boys” posing as men have their ego threatened, most of the rest of the world suffers (see: Donald Trump, who outshines Ken’s tan with orangeness). And when they see that the spotlight isn’t enough on them, they’re liable to mimic the person (particularly if that person is a woman) getting the most attention in a manner so obnoxious that it cannot be ignored. That, to this viewer, is how Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” came across at the 96th Annual Academy Awards (complete with the additional sausage party “cachet” of Guns n’ Roses’ Slash on guitar). For not only was Monroe something of the original Barbie (minus the rail-thin body type), but she was somebody that men were always trying to co-opt for themselves. Trying to turn into their little doll and take credit for “inventing” her out of the raw clay that was Norma Jeane Baker. But Marilyn was her own creation. It was just often hard for her to remember that with all the men around (including Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller) filling her head with mantras that she was somehow “wrong” or “unequipped.”

    Thus, for Gosling to graft the “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” number for himself doesn’t feel “feminist,” so much as an unwanted and unnecessary impingement on Marilyn Land, ergo Women’s Land (known to some as Barbie Land). Marilyn, who died before she could suffer the inevitable Hollywood criticisms about looking old. Barbie, at least, has the benefit of being perennially plastic so as to uphold her Aryan-centric good looks. 

    Incidentally, during his Oscar monologue, host Jimmy Kimmel made a crack about Gosling and Robbie winning the genetic lottery. But even those (read: women) with good looks and regular plastic surgery upkeep end up falling prey to what Marilyn forewarns of in her illustrious number: “Men grow cold as girls grow old/And we all lose our charms in the end.” Unless, of course, you’re the kind of privileged white male that Ken embodies. Greta Gerwig, by creating “empathy” for such a character, perhaps didn’t fully understand what she hath wrought in doing so. Nor has Gosling fully understood the homoerotic coding (posing as a “butch” interpretation) he’s entered into the canon of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” performances (already gay kryptonite to begin with, especially at drag shows). 

    Maybe Kimmel foreshadowed as much by making the Brokeback Mountain-related joke (also during his monologue) to Gosling, “You are so hot. Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.” Because women, as has been emphasized repeatedly in life and in pop culture, are secondary to “men’s things” (which takes on a new level and meaning in terms of gay men imitating straight women). Even when they were originally “women’s things” (à la “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”) to begin with. Nonetheless, Ken’s “big dick Kenergy” still proved no match for fellow Barbie Soundtrack-er Billie Eilish in the Best Original Song category. But a “What Was I Made For?” win is, in effect, an “I’m Just Ken” win. Because what belongs to women also belongs to men (#dowry). That is, in “liberal” Hollywood, what Gretchen Wieners would call “just, like, the laws of feminism.” 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Olivia Rodrigo and the Myth of “Kennedy Class,” Or: The Kennedy Fallacy

    Olivia Rodrigo and the Myth of “Kennedy Class,” Or: The Kennedy Fallacy

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    In keeping with the tradition of elevating the Kennedys to the height of glamor in American politics (which should be telling of how “glamorous” American politics is), Olivia Rodrigo’s opening track for Guts, “all-american bitch,” wields a more than somewhat false simile. Specifically, “I got class and integrity/Just like a goddamn Kennedy, I swear.” But, unless this line is meant to be facetious (as many of the others in the song are), Rodrigo seems as misinformed as she was about which short story collection of Joan Didion’s she actually took inspiration from in coming up with the title for this song. For it’s no secret now (as it scarcely was then) that the Kennedy name/presidency was mired in crookedness (though only Marilyn can truly say if that applied to JFK’s dick as well as his code of ethics).

    From the rumors of John’s patriarch, Joseph Kennedy Sr., pulling the necessary strings to nudge then-mayor of Chicago Richard Daley to, let’s say, influence certain Cook County ballot boxes to using the Secret Service to ferry his various mistresses in and out of bedrooms, the Kennedy name—particularly in its primary association with “Jack”—hardly equates with class or integrity. And definitely not discretion. Indeed, JFK was about as discreet as Miss Monroe’s Jean Louis gown at his forty-fifth birthday celebration/Democratic Party fundraising gala in 1962. A spectacle that occurred mere months before JFK probably killed her (with some help from RFK, perhaps—and Teddy, per a slightly offensive 1985 SNL sketch in which Madonna plays Marilyn…this being only fair considering she would end up sleeping with John Jr.). A “conspiracy theory” that certainly wouldn’t be classy if it turned out to be true. But even if it’s not (which remains debatable to many), there are still plenty of other ways in which JFK hardly radiated class. The same went for the rest of his “clan” (as the Irish like to call families—particularly families of a storied and extensive lineage). Whether it was RFK’s own affair with Marilyn (and Jackie, for that matter) or Ted Kennedy leaving the scene of the crime he committed by driving himself and RFK campaign staffer Mary Jo Kopechne off the road while drunk.

    Yes, the infamous Chappaquiddick “incident” was one of the most peak examples of true “Kennedy class.” Kopechne, incidentally, was moved to enter the political realm in the first place after seeing the JFK inauguration speech during which he pontificated, “…my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Soon after, Kennedy would bilk the country and its highest office of all the privilege he could get out of it. And what Kopechne ended up doing “for Teddy” rather than her country, unfortunately, was dying. Though, of course, JFK could say the same.

    Luckily for Joe Sr., he still had plenty of children to bet on in the race called Building an American Dynasty. And at the top of the list after Joe Jr.’s death was Jack. A man whose penchant for instinctively sweeping any wrongdoing beneath the rug was not much better than what Teddy exhibited with Chappaquiddick (hence, taking hours to report the accident, and Mary Jo’s death along with it). But what was to be expected of the Kennedy sons when it came to shirking transparency at all costs? They learned from the best burier of secrets and shame, after all: Joe Sr. Better known as the brainchild behind pushing for his daughter, Rosemary, to get a lobotomy because she was prone to having seizures and erratic/violent mood swings. Being that this was 1941, slapping her with the then-current panacea of a lobotomy was, sadly, par for the course. She was just twenty-three when the procedure ended up incapacitating her and preventing her from speaking in a way that could be understood as anything other than gibberish. So what else would Joe Sr. do but clean up the “mess” he made by burying Rosemary’s existence (hiding her whereabouts for decades) in a Wisconsin institution for the disabled? Never mind that Joe Sr. was the one who did the disabling by trying to “fix” a person who wasn’t broken. Again, real fuckin’ “classy.”

    When it comes to the generation of children Joseph Sr. begat, it was apparent that they (particularly the men) were taking a page out of the lawless, devil-may-care playbook he had nonverbally written for them. Most notably when it came to his propensity for stepping outside of his marriage with a celebrity. Even at a time when the very concept of “celebrity” was still germinal in its movie star iteration. Nonetheless, during the silent movie era, there were few bigger precursors to major stardom than Gloria Swanson. And after being among the few to actually increase his bank balance in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Joe Sr. found himself orbiting the Hollywood scene, buying up stakes in studios and theaters to build on his “portfolio” of wealth.

    It was during this time that he encountered Swanson (in the days before she became Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard)…and proceeded to ruin her life. Not just by ousting her husband at the time, Henri de la Falaise, but also by defrauding her out of millions of dollars after becoming her business manager, in addition to her paramour. It was when Joe decided to gift her with a Cadillac and expense it on her production company’s account that she finally had to call him out. A move that reportedly sent him out the door without ever speaking to her again. With this in mind, John’s behavior toward Marilyn almost looks positively princely (Rodrigo influencer Lana Del Rey also seemed to think the same of his behavior toward Jackie, if the 2012 video for “National Anthem” is anything to go by).

    As the third generation of Kennedys (this being counted from the start of Joe Sr.) rose to prominence, it became quickly apparent that boorish behavior was something that ran in the blood. For JFK’s lone son, John Jr., had his own predilection for extramarital affairs. Only rather than being the married one in the scenario, he preferred to be the paramour. Specifically, to Madonna, who was “legally bound” to Sean Penn at the time of their tryst in 1988. Though Madonna might remind that Penn was a bit of a stick in the mud when it came to having any fun or lapping up the spotlight that went with the territory of being a major celebrity. Made more major by being “attached” to one of the biggest stars in the world. And rather than repelling JFK Jr., as it did Sean, the former seemed to be all the more titillated because of her Marilyn Monroe-level fame…not to mention aesthetic. And yes, Madonna was already well-known for paying homage to one of the twentieth century’s greatest icons early on in her career.

    Perhaps most famously when she re-created the famed “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” sequence from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for her “Material Girl” video in 1985. Funnily enough, it was Sean who met and fell in love with Madonna on that set—not John Jr. But that didn’t mean Marilyn’s specter wouldn’t still haunt their eventual relationship. After all, Jackie insisted John call off his romance not because Madonna was a married woman, but because she was way too much of a Marilyn fangirl. With “class” like this, Jackie really had become a full-blown Kennedy.

    Even those roundaboutly connected to the Kennedys couldn’t seem to avoid the taint of uncouthness and/or sexual impropriety. One such prime example being Andrew Cuomo. Married to Kerry Kennedy for fifteen years (from 1990 to 2005), his descent into shame may have taken decades to occur, but when it happened, oh how it happened big. In a scandal that broke at the end of 2020 (just when Cuomo was riding high on praise [most of it self-given] for his handling of the pandemic). In the end, Attorney General Letitia James released the findings of an independent investigative report that stated Cuomo sexually harassed eleven women during his tenure as New York governor (and who knows how many others before that?). Needless to say, some standard-issue male Kennedy bullshit rubbed off on him. That, and probably working within the Clinton administration. Bill himself being a “renowned” acolyte of JFK—managing to get his picture taken with the OG presidential philanderer in 1963.

    While marriage to a Kennedy might turn you corrupt (or at least cause you to compromise some of your erstwhile ironclad “principles) if you weren’t already, being a Kennedy male appeared to all but assure that you could be born into a “high class” and still have no class at all. Most markedly when it came to the treatment of women. Another case in point: William Kennedy Smith, the son of Jean Kennedy/nephew of JFK. Smith was acquitted of a rape charge in 1991 despite potential reams of evidence against him. Evidence that also would have included the testimonies of three women stating on record that Smith had sexually assaulted them in the past. Their testimonies were deemed by Judge Mary Lupo to be inadmissible. After all, American “justice” stipulates that you should only be on trial for the crime you’ve committed, not the many others you’ve committed in the past and gotten away with.

    Then there was Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, son to Bobby. He, too, was another predatory Kennedy. A fact that came to light in 1997, two years before John Jr. died in a plane crash. But Michael had his own crash to deal with after being accused of having an affair with his children’s babysitter. Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if the affair hadn’t started when she was the Lolita age of fourteen. In typical “Kennedy clout” fashion, Michael evaded being charged with statutory rape in part because the three polygraph tests he took were conducted by companies that the Kennedys directly employed. Perhaps the only form of “justice,” then, could come in the skiing accident that resulted in his death at the end of 1997.

    And so, when Olivia Rodrigo perpetuates this bizarre and totally inaccurate trope about the Kennedys having class and integrity, well, it doesn’t bode well for Gen Z unlearning the undeserved association the Kennedys seem to have with “sophistication” and “glamor” in American politics. Something Gloria Swanson, who suffered the fallout of being collateral damage when it came to Kennedy ambition and entitlement, was unafraid to speak on. But that was after decades of silence and being almost on the verge of death. For she would only confess to her affair with Joe Sr. just three years before she passed away, releasing her autobiography (ghostwritten, of course) in 1980.

    “He was not very sophisticated insofar as knowing the right thing to do,” Swanson would “diplomatically” tell Barbara Walters in a 1981 interview promoting the book, called Swanson on Swanson. She then ominously added, “This man accomplished anything he wanted, including putting his son in the White House.” It was an inherited trait, this bulldozing version of “class.” Except that, in America, having class doesn’t really mean you have to be magnanimous. In fact, quite the opposite—it just means you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to secure your fortune.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Judy Balaban, High-Placed Participant in Hollywood, Dies at 91

    Judy Balaban, High-Placed Participant in Hollywood, Dies at 91

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    Judy Balaban, the daughter of a longtime studio mogul who dated Montgomery Clift and Merv Griffin, married Tony Franciosa and served as one of Grace Kelly’s bridesmaids at her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco, has died. She was 91.

    Balaban died Thursday night in a hospital in Los Angeles, her friend, author and documentary filmmaker Cari Beauchamp, told The Hollywood Reporter.

    Balaban was a champion for civil rights, serving on the board of directors for the ACLU of Southern California for decades.

    In a 2010 piece for Vanity Fair that she and Beauchamp co-wrote, Balaban described using LSD (then legal) as a form of therapy in the early 1960s when her good friends Cary Grant and his third wife, Betsy Drake, were using it, too.

    “What I had with Cary and Betsy was a kind of soul-baringness that the culture didn’t start to deal with until years later,” she says in the story. “We continued to have that even when our lives went off in different directions.”

    Balaban also talked about those days during an appearance in the 2017 Showtime documentary Becoming Cary Grant.

    Her 1961-67 marriage to Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain, The Name of the Game) was sandwiched between her marriages to high-profile Hollywood agent Jay Kanter from 1953-61 and to actor Don Quine (The Virginian) from 1971-96. All three ended in divorce.

    Judith Rose Balaban was born in Chicago in October 13, 1932, to Tillie and Barney Balaban. Her father co-owned a chain of theaters before he was elected president of Paramount in 1936, and he would preside over the studio through 1964.

    Her brother was noted jazz musician Red Balaban, and her half-brother was Burt Balaban, a producer of films including 1960’s Murder, Inc.

    She and her family moved to New York when her dad took the Paramount job, and she attended high school in Washington, D.C., before returning to Manhattan to work in the fashion industry.

    Balaban, who was in the gossip sheets as dating Clift in the early ’50s when he was making films like A Place in the Sun, was going out with Griffin and watching him sing at a nightclub when she was introduced to Kanter. Their marriage brought her to Hollywood.

    Balaban became fast friends with Kelly through Kanter, who was the actress’ agent (he also represented the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Paul Newman during his career). The star of High Noon, Rear Window and The Country Girl called her “Judybird”; she called Kelly “Graciebird.”

    When Kelly and Rainier wed at Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Monaco on April 18, 1956, Balaban was there alongside fellow bridesmaids Maree Frisby, a high-school friend of Kelly’s; Sally Parrish and Bettina Thompson, classmates from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; Carolyn Scott, a modeling companion; and actress Rita Gam, Kelly’s onetime roommate in Hollywood.

    All traveled to Monaco with the bride-to-be aboard the SS Constitution. (Ava Gardner, who starred with Kelly in 1953’s Mogambo, reportedly declined to be a bridesmaid.)

    Balaban wrote about the experience in her 1989 book, The Bridesmaids: Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, and Six Intimate Friends.

    She described Kelly’s dress — created by MGM costume designer Helen Rose — as “twenty-five yards of silk peau de soie, another twenty-five of light silk taffeta, ninety-eight yards of silk tulle and nearly three hundred and twenty yards of Valenciennes lace.”

    Balaban also appeared in 1983 and 2018 documentaries about Clift and one about Kelly in 1987 and was interviewed for Mark Cousins’ acclaimed 2011 doc series The Story of Film: An Odyssey.

    Survivors include her daughters, Amy, whom she had with Kanter, and Nina, whom she had with Franciosa; and a cousin, Oscar-nominated actor Bob Balaban. Victoria, her other daughter with Kanter, died in June 2020.

    Scott Feinberg contributed to this report.

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  • Dogman Gives Caleb Landry Jones His Joker (And Catwoman) Role

    Dogman Gives Caleb Landry Jones His Joker (And Catwoman) Role

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    With 2023 marking the year of Luc Besson being legally cleared of all sexual misconduct charges brought against him by Sand Van Roy, perhaps it’s ironic that the movie he should choose to come out with posits that, in this life, you can only trust bitches. That is to say, dogs. And sure, there are some male ones in the film, too, but nonetheless, the antithetical-to-his-denial-of-misconduct quality is there. And yet, dichotomy and duality is at the heart of Dogman, which marks Besson’s twenty-first film since he began releasing them forty-two years ago (with the short film, L’Avant-dernier, serving as his 1981 debut). And it seems with this one, Besson is determined to have it characterized as a “return to form,” which, certainly, it is. Even if a form that borrows heavily from many other recent tropes. Not least of which is Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in 2019’s Joker. 

    Caleb Landry Jones, who delivers the performance of his career thus far, is only too ready to emulate that trope as Douglas Munrow a.k.a. the eponymous “Dogman” himself. And yes, like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman (or even Danny DeVito’s Penguin), he gravitates toward this particular type of animal because it is the only living creature that has ever shown any type of kindness or affection toward him. This starts from an early age (as it did for Penguin with his penguins), which we learn about through the device of retelling it from the present to a psychiatrist named Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs). It is Evelyn who is called (in the middle of the night, of course) into the New Jersey detention center where Douglas is being held until they can decide, first and foremost, what his gender is. Initially arrested while wearing Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” getup (adding a dash of Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey into the pastiche), the police are too confused by Douglas to understand that he’s merely a cross-dresser who happened to be on his way to perform at a drag show that night before he was so rudely interrupted by someone seeking to destroy the perfectly imperfect insular world he had built with his coterie of dogs. 

    Naturally, we don’t get to that portion of the story until the end, after Douglas has rehashed his entire harrowing ordeal of an existence to Evelyn. Somewhat surprised that he’s so willing to talk to her (and often confess to various crimes in the process), he eventually tells her that the reason why he does is because pain recognizes pain. And for Evelyn, whose own story goes far more unexplored, that pain threatens to return in the form of her physically abusive ex-husband, who’s been skulking around her house to try to see their son, even though he’s been forbidden by a judge from doing so. But again, Besson isn’t making this movie about a Black woman. It is, as usual, the story of an alienated white man. But, at the bare minimum, Besson didn’t take the Todd Phillips approach by making him a conventionally straight incel. Granted, Douglas has his own romantic desires for a woman go unfulfilled, but it says something that he’s at home among the drag world after spending much of his youth in a cage studying women’s magazines. The ones his mother had to hide from the sight of Douglas’ violent father, Mike (Clemens Schick), behind the wall of the dog cage.

    It is this cage where Douglas will be forced to make a home when Mike exiles him there. This because Douglas’ traitorous older brother, Richie (Alexander Settineri), snitches on him about feeding the dogs when they’re not supposed to be. For, in case you couldn’t guess, the only reason someone as hateful as Mike would own dogs is to use them in fights. Ergo, starving them just before one so that they’ll be extra bloodlusting. Incidentally, the word “Dogman” can also refer to a person who raises dogs for the sole purpose of dog fighting. 

    In a certain sense, that’s what Douglas ends up doing, too. For he raises his fellow brothers and sisters (telling his father he prefers the dogs to his own family, which is how he ends up being exiled to the cage in the first place) to fight for him. To serve as the protectors he never got in his parents—the people who are supposed to love and protect you at all costs. Instead, Douglas must receive that from the family he “makes” in his canine brethren. Retreating entirely into the pack after his father shoots a gun at him, not only clipping a finger off, but lodging a bullet in his spine that 1) can’t be removed without risk of death and 2) permanently paralyzes Douglas. 

    As the rest of his youth unfolds, Douglas is shuffled around, landing in a home where he meets the only woman he’ll ever love: Salma Bailey (Grace Palma). It is she who teaches him about theater, and how it is the gateway to being anything and anyone you could ever want to be. This is, undoubtedly, what affirms his love of dressing up as women, ultimately leading him to performing once a week at a drag club. But only for songs that allow him to remain stationary (he can stand without a wheelchair for the length of a song), thus performing as “old-timey” women like Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich (this being a very Besson touch). In the scenes leading up to Douglas’ eventual discovery of the club as a haven that will allow him to make some (legal) income, he admits to Evelyn that it was hard, at first, to find work. What with his wheelchair-bound status. This is part of what leads viewers to believe that it might have been a more discriminatory time in the U.S. (i.e., the 90s). But, to that end, perhaps the oddest aspect of Dogman is its sense of time. Although Douglas tells Evelyn he’s thirty years old, the year of his birth is shown as 1991. Theoretically, that ought to mean we’re in 2021, and yet, the use of VHS tapes for the security cameras that show his dogs stealing from rich people makes it feel like it’s meant to be set in some earlier time, when it was so much more difficult to catch a criminal (and, again, so much easier to discriminate in the workplace). But then, other details, like Evelyn talking on a cellphone with headphones while driving, continue to suggest a more current time period. 

    And yet, just as we don’t really question how or why his dogs can understand and react to the words Douglas is telling them, we don’t much question the holes in the fabric of Dogman’s space-time continuum. Besson is too good at delivering a filmic feast for the eyes to distract from such an anomaly. This includes using the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” to soundtrack Douglas’ fruitless job search before finally showing us a man in Annie Lennox drag (the suit and cropped orange hair, obviously) singing along. Eventually, Douglas finds himself in that same club where the Lennox impersonator is lip syncing and implores the owner for some work, declaring that if you can perform Shakespeare, you can perform anything. 

    But it isn’t just a Shakespearean or even Joker influence at play as the plot of Dogman progresses. There’s also some notable Home Alone booby trap action going on in act three, as Douglas rallies his canine army to defend him against a gang boss he enraged at the outset of the narrative. And all because he was trying to do a good deed for a sweet old lady who was being milked for too much “protection” money by these New Jersey goons. But, as it is rightly said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Douglas has learned that time and time again, yet can continue to tolerate existence because of the purity and goodness he sees in dogs. And they, in turn, show him the loyalty and devotion he’s never found in any human. Indeed, they’ll go to the ends of the Earth to stick with their “master” (even if Douglas probably sees himself as more of an equal). In this regard, one could even bill Dogman as something like a deranged Homeward Bound. As another recent dog movie, Strays, also happens to be. 

    During the expectedly violent (because: Besson) denouement occurs, it’s apparent that Besson seeks to make his character Shakespearean in his fatal flaw of being a romantic, even after all he’s experienced to know better. And, because Besson loves martyr figures, he lays the Christ imagery on thick at the end, as though we needed to be reminded that Douglas most certainly possesses a bit of the Balthazar (though a donkey, not a dog) from Au Hasard Balthazar characteristic: being consistently beaten down by life despite doing no harm, yet continuing to persist in the face of his often literal bruisings. Unlike the Joker, however, this hardening of the spirit doesn’t turn him evil, per se, only makes him yet another threat to society and its insistence that “being a good boy” will get you far.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Marilyn Monroe’s Last Home Saved From Demolition (For Now)

    Marilyn Monroe’s Last Home Saved From Demolition (For Now)

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    Modest by today’s standards, the 2,900-square-foot Brentwood home that iconic star Marilyn Monroe bought in the early 1960s is notable for several reasons: It’s the only property the actress independently owned. It’s the place where she was found dead of a sleeping pill overdose at age 36. And it’s a building that a shadowy and nameless owner almost destroyed until the Los Angeles City Council stepped in to stop it.

    News that the owner of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive wanted to destroy the home spread quickly this week after the New York Post reported that it was in “the initial stages of the demolition process.” The four-bedroom, three-bath Spanish Colonial hacienda, which Monroe bought for $75,000 as her third marriage, with playwright Arthur Miller, came to its end, had been evaluated for landmark status in 2013, but that process stalled, despite it being—as movie producer and neighbor Rodney Liber put it to the LA Times—“one of the most famous houses in the world.”

    That famous house was sold in 2017 to an LLC called Glory of the Snow for $7.25 million; in July, it was sold to the similarly named Glory of the Snow Trust for $8.35 million, the LAT reports. However, the actual humans behind the company names are unclear. 

    The LLC was managed by Emerald Lake hedge fund manager Dan Lukas and his wife Anne Jarmain. The trust names a person called “Andrew Sahure” as its trustee, but that’s a moniker which boasts no Google or public records results beyond this matter. (Gardners will note, however, that “glory of the snow” is the common name for chionodoxa luciliae, a spring-blooming perennial known for its purple flowers. Do with that what you may.)

    Monroe bought her Brentwood home in 1962, as her marriage to Arthur Miller (pictured here) was ending. 

    New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images

    It’s unclear if anyone currently lives in the house, or why its owners want to destroy it, but as news spread of the plan, neighbors and preservationists sprang into action. A spokesperson for LA Councilwoman Traci Park says that their office received “hundreds of calls” asking her to step in, Reuters reports. And step in she did, introducing a council motion Friday asking the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) to consider the home for inclusion in LA’s list of historic cultural monuments. The motion was approved unanimously, giving the CHC 75 days to evaluate and approve the house as a landmark.

    In response, LA’s Board of Building and Safety Commissioners paused any potential work at the site, saying in a letter to the owners that the preliminary approval for demolition was “issued in error.”

    “Under the Cultural Heritage Ordinance, this action immediately triggers a temporary stay on all building permits while the matter is under consideration by the Cultural Heritage Commission and City Council,“ KTLA reports the letter as reading. “Also, the property, regardless of whether a permit exists or does not exist, shall not be demolished, substantially altered or removed.”

    “This will be the first step in ensuring that we can protect this home against demolition,” Park told ABC 7. “The overwhelming sentiment here is clear. This home must be preserved as a crucial piece of Hollywood’s and the city of Los Angeles’ history, culture and legacy.”

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    Eve Batey

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  • This Was Marilyn Monroe’s Exact Skincare Routine, and Yes, You Can Still Shop It

    This Was Marilyn Monroe’s Exact Skincare Routine, and Yes, You Can Still Shop It

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    I’ve seen every single movie Marilyn Monroe ever made at least five times, I’ve read countless books and biographies about the star, and my favorite-ever photo of her (captured by Ray O’Neill in Jasper National Park during the filming of The River of No Return) is the background on my phone. So yes, you could say I have a hearty fascination with the actress. My parents are baby boomers who are now in their mid-70s, so I grew up on black-and-white films, kitschy crooners, and anything else you might associate with ’50s and ’60s pop culture.

    I’ve always loved Old Hollywood glamour, in particular, and even as a tiny child, I would pore over the glossy images of iconic screen stars from the golden age, dissecting their nail color, hairstyles, and outfits and desperately researching how they applied their makeup and the specific products they used or were powdered with in a certain movie. No wonder I became a beauty editor, eh? I’ve always loved a great beauty breakdown!

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    Erin Jahns

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  • The 10 Best Onscreen Portrayals Of Real-Life People

    The 10 Best Onscreen Portrayals Of Real-Life People

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    One of the essential skills of a successful actor is the ability to shape-shift into characters far removed from oneself. Sometimes, that character has been meticulously crafted by the screenwriter — but other times, it’s pulled directly from the pages of history. Perfecting a portrayal of a real person is no easy feat, however. While there’s certainly a set of guidelines to follow, embodying someone from recent (or not so recent) history comes with all sorts of pitfalls and expectations.

    An actor’s main challenge when playing a real-life person on screen is avoiding mimicry. Obviously, the audience is supposed to suspend disbelief and imagine that the actor is that historical figure. But simply copying one’s mannerisms and vocal inflections isn’t enough to craft a compelling performance. It’s one thing to coincidentally look like someone from history, and it’s another to embody them from the inside out. There needs to be an element of surprise, a revelation of the iconic figure’s spirit. It’s not all about striking every pose or hitting every mark. When the actor is feeling the essence of the character, we can tell.

    READ MORE: The Most Historically Inaccurate Movies Ever

    Throughout the years, there have been countless biopics and dramas that bring some of history’s most famous figures to life. While many are serviceable, few stand out as truly extraordinary. And with talks of Cillian Murphy’s groundbreaking performance in Oppenheimer — which hits theaters July 21 — let’s take the time to review 10 of the best portrayals of real-life people to ever grace the silver screen.

    The Best Onscreen Portrayals Of Real-Life People

    These actors pulled off incredible transformations to play real-life figures from history.

    12 Actors Who Did Crazy Things To Get Into Character

    These actors stopped at nothing to transform into their onscreen roles.

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    Claire Epting

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