Marilyn Monroe a Bond Girl?
SilentSpy
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I was looking at her old Christie's auction items and she owned a copy of From Russia with Love. It made me think if she could have been a good Bond girl. Or even if the book belonged to JFK since that was his favorite.
"Better late than never."
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I can see her taking this serious approach in a Bond girl role like those we've seen in the first four, but after Bond mania had reached its peak it would have been difficult IMO for her to stay serious since the Bond movies themselves began to be self-aware after that point and there would have been the tendency for her to likewise devolve into her camp, sex-symbol persona. I also think it was possible for her to own her character as a Bond girl, of course depending on the treatment the script and direction would have allowed. Because up to that point in the 60s Connery Bonds as pointed on this thread, there had been no leading female American role and the closest was Paula Caplan (she was American in the movie, right?) Had MM been introduced as a Bond girl, the emphasis would have been the contrast of an American object of beauty against the leading girls before, and the development of Bond's relationship with this girl from America would be the novelty, esp. for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The novelty would have been similar to that of Tanya in FRWL and Kissy in YOLT (except in that movie, the 2 use of Japanese Bond girls diluted the effect). Of course, nowadays that wouldn't be a novelty anymore since the American Bond girl has been done ad nauseum.
Sticking to Fleming, of course the roles MM could have had were Pussy and Tiffany though it would have been a challenge for her to go against her own persona by playing these strong characters, esp. Pussy who's supposed to be choleric and a bit mannish (Tiffany too to an extent), which I think was within her range.
I think she could have made a good Pussy Galore, more in line with the Texan in Fleming's novel. Monroe was too old in a way but then again Blackman was older than Connery so what gives. However, really at the time that would have made GF a new Monroe movie, rather than the smash Bond movie it needed to be. And she was associated with the 50s, the past, and Bond was very much the 60s.
Plus she was dead by then.
Anyway, we'd already had Monro in a Bond film by that point...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thanks, NP. For that reason alone of a Bond movie becoming a MM movie, it shouldn't happen. I for one don't think staring MM for the sake of having her is a good rationale. But to be fair to her, she was only 36 when she died, though she did look older than her age, unfortunately.
On a different note... Did I ever share here that the dumbest thing I regret to this day was watching a concert that had Matt Munro open, and I went out for a smoke when he sang FRWL
Historically Bond producers don't tend to go for big names like Marilyn, and I am not sure she could have convinced as a Russian.
Barbara Bach sure didn't! But how would you describe Barbara Jefford's accent as Romanova's voice in FRWL? It never struck me as Russian, but it worked.
Has MM ever done a non-American role? FRWL would have been an acting coup for her and a PR coup for the movie, esp. with the JFK connection with the novel!
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Me too. Same goes for that maid that I thought was French in the movie Clue.
Since Marilyn had so many problems, I wonder if playing something more personal would have worked? Bond always seemed attracted to the problem girls in the books.
Truth can be stranger than fiction. Imagine the dastardly plot in MM's real life, the White House in cahoots with the mafia to cover up MM's affair with President Kennedy and Bond comes to the rescue!
That or something similar or inspired by the book version of The Spy Who Loved Me.