Monroe

YES, yet another book about MM. At ast this one is quite unpretentious, unlike, for example, Norman Mailer's effort in that direction. It is just what it says: a pictorial biography with the salient facts and a few choice comments embodied entirely in the captions. Not only does the text keep plugging the film-star's extraordinary lack of privacy (at any rate in those days of frenzied fan worship), but the pictures bear this out in detail. Hardly a moment, however intimate, of poor Marilyn's life seems to have gone unsnapped by some photographer somewhere. Few lives can be chronicled this way in such exhaustive detail. The book does not even go in for the usual padding of film-stills: there cannot be more than half-a-dozen pictures taken straight from a Monroe movie in the whole volume.

J.R.T.