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A Darker Shade of Blonde: The Film Noir Movies of Marilyn Monroe

January 14, 2023 Christopher Davis

Studio promotional still of Marilyn Monroe in ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

Although best known for her roles as bubbly blondes in films like GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953), THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955), and SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Marilyn Monroe made a number of movies that ran counter to that caricature. Curiously, a few of them are film noir — a genre rarely associated with the icon. Playing a small part in 1950’s heist film THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, it is DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) and, more notably, NIAGARA (1953), where Monroe really shines as shadowy, complex characters in very dark tales.

Having made a dozen or more movies by the time she was given the starring role as unbalanced babysitter in DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK, Monroe was best known for bit parts in comedies, musicals, and light dramas. It wasn’t until 1950’s ASPHALT JUNGLE that she began to be noticed as potentially more than a pretty face (“The picture that first brought fame to Marilyn Monroe,” read one poster). Mistress to a lawyer who acts as “fixer” for a heist gone bad, Monroe has few lines in ASPHALT JUNGLE, but the role established her as a character actress who could play something darker than the parts she had previously been given.

In CLASH BY NIGHT (1952), another, less memorable, film noir, Marilyn had a rather small part (as girlfriend to main character Mae’s [Barbara Stanwyck’s] brother. But the film itself was overshadowed by the publicity of being shot while the nude calendar photos of Monroe surfaced (which proved a boon to ticket sales). Suddenly, she was more of a star than ever, with some theater owners putting Marilyn’s name above Stanwyck’s on the marquee.

One month later, she would truly earn top billing in her first real breakout role: Nell, the unstable babysitter in DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK.

EVERY BIT AN ACTRESS

With DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK, Fox Studio head Darryl Zanuck wanted to sell Marilyn as a serious actress. But the studio had its cake and ate it too with the way it sold the picture. “Every bit a woman… every bit an actress,” is how the pressbook read. Fox knew they had a hot property, but weren’t sure what would best work for the actress. But Monroe knew she wanted to be taken more seriously, and the noir themes of the picture appealed to her.

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) pressbook — Pressbook for DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) featuring Marilyn Monroe.

DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK: FILM-NOIR?

What is film noir? To borrow from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s comment on obscenity, “I know it when I see it,” film noir is part genre, part style, and often open to interpretation. Its themes of guilt, disillusionment, greed, anger, loss, and misery are often played out by the lowest of the low in society: thieves, con men, killers, down-on-their-luck average Joes (and Janes) who but for one fatal mistake wouldn’t find themselves in the predicaments they are in. There are cops, detectives, loose women, and hardened criminals. Plots play out with lots of violence and sexuality (both of which were skillfully handled post-code), misogyny, betrayal, and cold, calculated murder. Visual styling and low-key lighting make grim and gritty locations all the more sinister. And someone usually ends up dead.

Additionally, many film noir movies suggest that their characters suffer some sort of defect or flaw in their character. And some come right out and tie lead characters to mental illness: depression, anxiety, even post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some form of mental illness is obvious in Monroe’s portrayal of Nell in the low budget, psychological thriller that is DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK.

A troubled babysitter — whose initially innocent evening of caring for a couple’s daughter at a hotel where her parents are celebrating at a gala in the lobby — Nell (Monroe) unravels as the film progresses, desirous of donning the clothes and jewelry of the mother as she develops fantasies about the man in a room across the courtyard. Played by Richard Widmark, Jed is just a guy who doesn’t take life and love too seriously, having been dumped for a lack of empathy by his girlfriend, played by Anne Bancroft (in her first role). His flirtation with Nell leads to her conflating their relationship in her mind, filling a void left by a lost love. In the course of trying to keep Widmark as a suitor, she abuses the girl in her care, knocks out her uncle (who is her surrogate parent), scares the older neighbors (surrogate grandparents?), and, ultimately, struggles with her charge’s mother in effort to her her fantasy intact.

It’s a stellar performance by Monroe (in a movie that is otherwise a bit reductive in its treatment of mental illness). Solid suspense — with great performances. There’s a sense that at any moment, something could go terribly wrong: violence, even murder. Its plot builds dread, leading the audience to believe that someone could, indeed, get themselves killed because of Nell’s delusions. A dark film, definitely. Film noir? It’s been since been considered by critics as one — albeit an odd entry in the genre.

Upon release, DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK was a commercial failure. Zanuck was concerned that Marilyn’s next film — where she would fully embody the femme fatale — would likewise be a flop.

He was wrong.

NIAGARA: MONROE AS FEMME FATALE

Marilyn Monroe as Rose, the femme fatale of NIAGARA (1953)

Quite unlike the timid, tortured Nell, Marilyn’s character in NIAGARA (1953) is the perfect noir villain: Rose Loomis. The unhappy wife of Korean War vet George Loomis (Joseph Cottom), Rose is the film’s central figure, and Monroe its star.

Plotting with her lover, Rose plans for her husband to die in a tunnel beneath the falls. Does she succeed in getting rid of him? That question propels the plot, and the backdrop of Niagra Falls provides a dramatic setting for what becomes a none-too-perfect murder.

Whereas Nell acts on impulse, Rose carefully schemes. It is a colder, more seductive role for Monroe, and perfect noir settings (walkways shrouded in mist, the turbulent rush of the falls) make for effective backdrops in what would be Monroe’s only true turn as femme fatale.

The moment she is introduced in NIAGARA, Rose has the dual air of a woman sweet, yet seductive — even sinister. The innocent couple who become inexorably entangled in Rose and George’s troubled marriage don’t quite know what to make of Rose when they first meet her, and neither do we. That’s the power of the femme fatale. Alluring and luring.

“Flaunting her charms as she lured men on and on to their eternal destruction,” says the voice over in one of the film’s trailers. Quickly becoming a full-blown femme fatale in a scene that find Rose requesting the record “Kiss” (a song that George suspects has secret meaning) Monroe is at once a woman desired and suspect as she sings along, emphasizing certain words that lend the song a sense of foreboding. Does she drive men crazy? Is she dangerous? That is the character trope of the femme fatale.

And, like many femme fatales, Rose is the catalyst for calamity.

NIAGARA may be quite unlike most film noirs is that it was shot in 3 strip technicolor. But the saturated scenes serve the film well in establishing its fantastic locations as more sinister than serene. Rose’s fushcia dress alone would not have had the impact it does in black and white. Neo-noir? Though that term is usually used by critics to refer to noir films after 1959, it suits NIAGARA. A dark toned — if bright colored — technicolor film.

BIMBO PARTS

Despite the success of NIAGARA, Zanuck still didn’t know what to do with his star. Famously, director Howard Hawks talked Zanuck into taking Monroe’s sex appeal and playing it for laughs.

For Marilyn, being cast solely in such roles surely shook her confidence in herself as a legitimate actress. As reported in an LA Times article, Don Murray, her co-star in 1956’s BUS STOP, said “she was trying to prove she was a serious actress and not just a movie star playing bimbo parts.” Still, she received some critical acclaim for her role as Chérie, the chanteuse from the Ozarks who wants to be a Hollywood star. As noted by Donald Spito in his excellent biography of Marilyn Monroe, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times (a long time fan of Monroe), in his review of BUS STOP, wrote “Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress.”

Marilyn Monroe in dress from SOME LIKE IT HOT — Marilyn Monroe, in rare color candid photo, from SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Still, the lighter roles continued: a superb comedic performance as Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk in Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) followed by the musical comedy LET’S MAKE LOVE (1960).

It wasn’t until 1961 and John Huston’s THE MISFITS that Marilyn would really get the chance to show off her talent as a serious actress again. Her final finished film, it was a commercial flop upon release. Written by Arthur Miller, THE MISFITS proved a difficult production — with the breakup of her marriage to Miller, and her abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs. A little over a year later, she would be dead.

REDISCOVERING MONROE

Marilyn Monroe will forever be a pop culture icon. Photos of her are known the world over. But in recent years, there been a rediscovery of Monroe’s work with critical acceptance that she, indeed, had talent as a dramatic actress.

TCM regularly shows many movies from her filmography, and arranges its website in such a way that it is easy to take a deep dive into her films like her film noir classics DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK and NIAGRA.

Also check out TCM’s “Noir Alley,” every Saturday night at midnight ET, where DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK was recently featured.

books, culture, film

Bad Things Come in Threes: The Weird Sisters (Brides) of Dracula

May 26, 2021 Christopher Davis

Greg Hildebrandt's The Harem — Greg Hildebrandt’s gorgeous illustrations for DRACULA include this one entitled “Johathan (sic) dreams of the vampiresses” (Unicorn Publishing, 1985)

That Bram Stoker deliberately chose to put three vampire “brides” in his 1897 novel DRACULA has been written about many times before. Some scholars point to the power of three, finding ancient symbolism in the number, or a mirroring of Lucy Westenra’s three suitors — Holmwood, Morris, and Seward — in the attraction Jonathan Harker feels toward them. Some even argue that the vampires that tempt Harker represent an inversion of the Holy Trinity. But the reason Stoker chose to have not one, or two, but three female vampires tempt Jonathan Harker may be as simple as this: he worked in the theater. And from theater he took his inspiration.

SISTERS, DAUGHTERS OR BRIDES?

Introduced in the third chapter of DRACULA, the vampire brides, as they have come to be known (but are never mentioned in the novel as such) are referred to in the fourth chapter as “those weird sisters” (from Jonathan Harker’s Journal, June 29). Two are dark (hair presumably?), with “aquiline noses, like the Count.” The other was “fair as fair can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires.”

As Leonard Wolf questions in his annotated edition of DRACULA, one wonders if the resemblance to Dracula of the first two suggest they may be related to him (sisters? daughters?). Of the three, the blonde, his apparent favorite, may be his wife. After all, the other two defer to her for right of first bite: “Go on! You are the first,” says one of the dark-haired sisters, “and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin.” Is she Dracula’s wife? Are the others his children? Is the Count a polygamist!

That they are called sisters by Harker (and later in the novel by Van Helsing) is telling. Nowhere in the book are they referred to as brides, though in popular culture, they have become to be known as such. In the taking of blood (or exchange, as when a transfusion of Holmwood’s blood temporarily aids Lucy), perhaps Stoker was suggesting a type of husband / wife relationship. Or a perversion of traditional marriage.

This much is certain: the sexually suggestive aspect of the vampire that may well be born of the repressed fantasies and insecurities of an Irishman writing in the late nineteenth century certainly finds its most open expression of sexuality in the films of the twentieth.

AT THE MOVIES

Dracula's Brides in 1931's Dracula — Pictured from left to right: Geraldine Dvorak, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia Thaw. From DRACULA (1931)

Filmic versions of the novel definitely suggest Dracula having a sexual relationship with the vampire women. Perhaps it is from the movies that the term “brides” comes. But the vampire women of Todd Browning’s 1931 production aren’t the source. These vampires are entirely uncredited (so I will give them credit here: Geraldine Dvorak, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia Thaw). They are more ghostly than provocative. Ethereal. Creepy. Sexual in suggestion. But not in action.

In both DRAKULA ISTANBUL’DA (1953) and Hammer’s HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), the sexuality is there, but there are not three vampire women. Only one in each of these adaptations. And neither is called a bride.

Valerie Gaunt, in the latter, is credited only as “Vampire Woman.” And though Hammer would go on to make a sequel entitled BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960) — originally scripted under the more appropriate title “Disciple of Dracula” — there are only two, not three, vampire women: Greta and Gina. Over a decade later, Hammer’s SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973) — though bearing the title COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE upon its release in America in 1979 — credits not three but four “vampire girls” (arguably, Joanna Lumley‘s Jessica Van Helsing is meant to be the titular bride).

THE RETURN OF THE BRIDES OF DRACULA

Vampire Brides of COUNT DRACULA (1977) — The Brides — credited as such — of BBC television’s COUNT DRACULA (1977). Susie Hickford, Sue Vanner, and Belinda Meuldijk

Dan Curtis, of Dark Shadows fame, would reinstate the three brides in his made-for-television adaptation of the novel in 1974, with the three vampire women referred to as “vampire wives.” Close, but not exactly brides. Of course, none of them are referred to as “sisters” either. It is not until 1977’s production COUNT DRACULA starring Louis Jordan that we may have the first instance in film or on television where the vampire women are actually credited as “Brides of Dracula.”

The Three Sisters — The Brides of Dracula are referred to as such in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992). From left to right are actresses Florina Kendrick, Monica Bellucci, and Michaela Bercu

Perhaps more famously, Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) also refers to the vampire women as brides as the end credits roll. It is in Coppola’s film that the brides are very definitely highly sexualized, and made to appear like women in a harem more than the ghostly figures of earlier productions. Florina Kendrick, Monica Bellucci, and Michaela Bercu are exotic, alluring, and layered deep with eastern-European garb and language.

As for Frank Langella’s turn at the titular Count in Universal’s 1979 “remake,” the vampire women aren’t even there (as it is based upon the Balderston / Deane stageplay).

Dracula with Brides in VAN HELSING (2004)

Fast forward to 2004 and Universal’s attempt at resurrecting its classic monsters in VAN HELSING, and there we find the return of a trio of brides. Taking flight in the form of harpies, they consist of Marishka (Josie Maran), Verona (Silvia Colloca), and Aleera (Elena Anaya), playing much more than mere temptresses. A scene where Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) and Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) do battle with them in a town square is the highlight of the movie.

STOKER AND THE STAGE

Regardless of how the label “brides” came to be, there’s still the issue of why Stoker chose to call the vampire women “sisters,” or, specifically (for Harker) “weird sisters” in the first place.

Working for the famous actor Henry Irving since 1878, Stoker would have been familiar with his employer’s repertoire ten years on. That year, 1888, saw Irving (who many suggest inspired certain aspects of the character of Dracula) purchase the Lyceum Theater. Among the first of performances was a revival of his Macbeth.

The Weird Sisters of Macbeth — G.J. Bennett, Drinkwater Meadows, W.H. Payne as the witches (1838) from the Folger Shakespeare Library

In Act I, Scene 3, the first of the witches that go one to prophesize Macbeth’s rise and fall, asks of the seocond: “Where hast thou been, sister?”

It may be as simple as that.

[note: the following amazing (to me at least!) revelation has been added in November, 2022, after reading Dacre Stoker’s and Robert Eighteen-Bisang’s edited and annotated version of the novel, released upon its 125th anniversary]

The proof was waiting there all along for Dracula scholars, hiding in a typescript lost for almost a century.

A TYPESCRIPT IS FOUND

As noted by Stoker and Bisang in the 125th Anniversary edition of DRACULA, no copy of the manuscript for the novel was ever found among Bram Stoker’s personal possessions (and notes [100 pages!], now kept by The Rosenbach Museum and Library). It was assumed any complete version of an early draft was lost to time. Until 1997, that is, when a printer’s copy was found on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Titled “The Un-Dead,” the typesecript went to auction at Christie’s. Microsoft’s Paul Allen came to possess it. Scholars were allowed to study it — including Robert Eighteen-Bissang. And in it? The following excised lines from the novel (underlined as in the 125th Anniversary edition), from Harker’s diary, June 29; on the date of his last letter, Harker hopes to never see the Count again:

“I dared not wait to see him return, for I feared to see those weird sisters. How right was Shakespeare, no one would believe that after three hundred years one should see in this fastness of Europe the counterpart of the witches of Macbeth.”

Turns out Bram had originally intended to make it quite clear: his vampire sisters were counterparts of the witches of Macbeth.**

THE POWER OF THREE

As for Shakespeare, he most likely drew his inspiration from Greek mythology: the Moirae — Lahkesis, Atropos, and Clotho — who dictate the destinies of humankind by spinning, drawing out, and cutting the threads of each life.

None of this is to say that the Greeks, the Bard (inspired by classical literature), or Stoker (inspired by Shakespeare) didn’t on some level make the choice of three women because the number itself holds some sacred or semiotic significance.

Omne trium perfectum. Everything in threes is perfect or whole.

The primary colors.

Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.

Father, son, and Holy Ghost.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Veni, vidi, vici. Stop, drop, and roll.

Sets of three just seem to make sense to us. We’re hard-wired to respond to threes — be they witches of Macbeth, or Stoker’s weird vampire women.

* Update: want to watch a modern re-interpretation of the weird sisters of Dracula? Neil LaBute’s HOUSE OF DARKNESS (2022) is a misogynist’s nightmare with all the trapping of classic gothic horror. It’s a slow-burn, to be sure, that feels more like a stage-play than a movie. And it requires patience, but the dialogue is delicious and the performances are strong with Justin Long as a hapless man named Hapgood who happens upon a woman named Mina (Kate Bosworth) who he sees as a “sure thing” because of her often bold behavior and frank language. But as the tension between them builds, Mina’s sisters show up (Gia Crovatin and Lucy Walters) and Hap gets more than he bargained for.

** Manuscript aside, the argument that Stoker based his vampire women on the witches of MacBeth had long been out there, argued by critics and film historians. But to have it have been in the manuscript all along was a confirmation of what many had only posited as a theory for years.

VAULT OF THOUGHTS