Basierend auf seiner langjährigen Freundschaft mit Arthur Miller und ausgiebiger Archivrecherche hat Jeffrey Meyers ein Porträt der Ehe zwischen dem größten amerikanischen Dramatiker des 20. Jahrhunderts und der beliebtesten amerikanischen Schauspielerin, Marylin Monroe, geschrieben. Dieses Buch stellt dar, warum sie heirateten, was sie fünf Jahre zusammenhielt und was die Ehe schließlich zerstörte; es zeigt die Folgen der anti-kommunistischen Hexenjagd für ihre Ehe sowie den Einfluss von Marylins auf Millers Leben und seine Kunst. Durch die Linse seiner Beziehung zu Marylin erhalten wir einen unverblümten und aufdeckenden Blick auf das Leben von Arthur Miller.
The Genius and the Goddess based on Jeffrey Meyers' long friendship with Arthur Miller and extensive archival research from Washington to Los Angeles is a portrait of a marriage. The greatest American playwright of the twentieth century and the most popular American actress both complemented and wounded one another.
Marilyn Monroe was a doomed personality whose tragic end was inevitable. Miller experienced creative agony with her. Their five-year marriage from 1956 to 1961 coincided with the creative peak of her career yet private and public conflict caused both of them great anguish.
This book explains why they married what sustained them for five years and what destroyed them; the effect of the anti-Communist witch-hunts on their marriage; and the impact of Marilyn on Miller's life and art. The fascinating cast of characters includes Marilyn's co-stars: Sir Laurence Olivier Yves Montand and Clark Gable; her leading directors: John Huston Billy Wilder and George Cukor; and her literary friends: Dame Edith Sitwell Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov.
Meyers offers an incisive account of the making and meaning of The Misfits which destroyed their marriage. But Marilyn remained Miller's tragic muse and her character exalted and tormented lived on for the next forty years in his work.
