I Wanna Be Loved By You

Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon. 

Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe presents the actress in a startling new light. 

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing with a mentally ill mother, an absent father and cruel foster parents. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about Hollywood, believing that acting would be her one-way ticket to happiness. Her dream was so powerful that she transformed herself into the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, and her image has been branded into the collective consciousness. Men lusted after her, and women wanted to be her. All her life, she just wanted to be loved. 

Told through 100 captivating snapshots, we are thrown into the glamorous but dangerous world of old Hollywood. We see a young Marilyn navigating the highs and lows of the studio system as she attempts to free herself from the constraints of Twentieth Century-Fox and forge her own path. We also go behind the scenes of her marriages to teenage sweetheart Jim Dougherty, baseball star Joe DiMaggio and famous playwright Arthur Miller. We hear the voices of friends, lovers – and enemies. 

Marilyn Monroe was more than just a goddess of the screen. She was highly intelligent and well-read, and formed long-term friendships with poets, philosophers, playwrights and political activists, such as with the avant-garde poet Edith Sitwell. After training with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, she worked hard to dismantle the common perception that she was nothing but a dumb blonde.

In the concluding chapters, Andrew Wilson unpicks what happened on the night Marilyn died after a suspected drug overdose – and investigates the rash of conspiracy theories that surround the star’s final moments. Were the Kennedys involved, or was she just let down by those closest to her? 

I Wanna Be Loved By You is a revealing and nuanced portrait of the life, death and afterlife of an icon who still fascinates us today.