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How Marilyn Monroe inspired David Lynch's entire career
"Everything is about Marilyn Monroe," David Lynch once declared as he considered the ultimate Hollywood starlet to be the biggest muse behind his characters.
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Film » Cutting Room Floor
Tue 4 February 2025 22:30, UK
David Lynch created works so unique and so specific that the film world had to coin a new term for it – “Lynchian”. It seemed as though there was no other way to define, describe or reference his cinematic world beyond his own vision, becoming a blueprint that countless directors after would take inspiration from and use the term of his name as a nod towards his limitless influence. However, while it might seem like Lynch’s imagination was utterly singular, one real-world starlet always existed – Marilyn Monroe.
Monroe is a complex figure to define. It would be hard to find a single person in this world who doesn’t know her name and her face. She is the ultimate image of Golden Age Hollywood, and her memory endures as one of the most recognisable actors in history. However, many people, despite her fame, couldn’t name one of her films. While being recognisable, it is sadly less for her talent and more just for her iconic look. It’s almost as if she played her roles too well as the ‘dumb blonde’ character she so often was cast as became the general public perception of her. Failing to see her impeccable comedic timing in films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or her complex characterisation in Seven Year Itch, many people simply see Monroe as a pretty face with nothing more to her.
But she was. She was so much more than that. Monroe was a passionate reader with a library of over 400 books, ranging from classic novels to French philosophers and psychology texts. She was an advocate for those with less power than her. She was a poet and a writer in her spare time, and she was a woman who had survived serious struggles, such as an incredibly difficult childhood and ongoing mental health issues. In short, she was a beauty queen with a whole secret inner world, which sounds exactly like a Lynch protagonist.
“Everything is about Marilyn Monroe,” David Lynch once declared. The director always had a deep love for Monroe in the way that he had a deep fascination with Hollywood, cinema and the mystery of icons like her, who seemed to have a whole darker side to their publicly shiny, happy lives. At one point in his career, he was even going to make a Monroe biopic based on the book The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. It got canned somewhere along the way, but really, every project Lynch did was a nod towards the actor as he saw her influence in so many of his characters.
“You could say that Laura Palmer is Marilyn Monroe,” he said. That one is obvious. In Twin Peaks, we have this beautiful young girl, seen mostly in a photo of herself with a tiara and a smile, who is revealed to have an incredibly dark and scary secret life. While the pilot episode of the show first introduces Palmer as the typically tragic victim, the beautiful dead girl, Lynch slowly unveils more and more of this mystery.
As the seasons go on, Palmer is never truly understood as she only seems to become more complex with more layers peeled back. Similar to the contrast between Monroe’s simple and ditzy public image versus her many passion and problems behind the scenes, Palmer is the perfect representation of the mysterious and complex women Lynch was always fascinated by. It’s a similar story in his other projects, too, as he added, “Mulholland Drive is about Marilyn Monroe, too.”
But it’s important to note that this isn’t trauma porn. Lynch’s love for Monroe wasn’t a fetishisation of her issues, her struggles and her eventual tragic death. It’s more about the ability of someone so famous, or for anyone who appears so light and perfect, to have such a deep and sometimes dark inner world. “It’s hard to say exactly what it is about Marilyn Monroe, but the woman-in-trouble thing is part of it,” the director told Vice, attempting to unpack it. He clarified, “It’s not just the woman-in-trouble thing that pulls you in, though. It’s more that some women are really mysterious.”
“I always loved Laura Palmer,” Lynch told The Guardian in 2014. As he prepared to release more footage from the series and Fire Walk With Me, he discussed the desire to reveal more and more about this character and her life. As he untangled the mystery of the cult character, his regular revisits to Laura Palmer and her world stood as proof of his love for her and his unending hunger to understand not only his own character but the woman who inspired her too, as if each project he did was an attempt to unpack the complex legacy of Marilyn Monroe too.
Related Topics
David LynchMarilyn MonroeMulholland DriveTwin Peaks
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