When you call a movie “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes,” your job is to at least offer something worth listening to. Directed by Emma Cooper in the latest addition to Netflix’s catalog of true (or crime-like) stories, this documentary begins by teasing some sort of conspiracy surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s 1962 death from an overdose. But mostly, the film presents a banal repetition of established facts and well-distributed rumors about Monroe’s life.
The tapes in question are the interviews Irish journalist Anthony Summers recorded while investigating Monroe; he published his conclusions in the 1985 book “Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe.” The film version adds the ostensible benefit of hearing the real voices of the likes of John Huston, Jane Russell, and Billy Wilder, while actors lip-gloss. sync with their memories – which, again, are mostly footnotes.
Summers apparently got more tantalizing information from the family of Ralph Greenson, who was Monroe’s psychiatrist, and of Fred Otash, a private detective who says in the tapes that Jimmy Hoffa wanted him to dig up dirt on John F. Kennedy and Robert F. kennedy . Throughout the film, Monroe is said to have been involved with both Kennedy brothers. The fear of communism and the riotous talk about nuclear weapons may have had something to do with it. But the innuendo, the biggest hits of Cold War paranoia, hardly amount to an enacting case or even a coherent theory.
Finally, Summers, who appears constantly, presents his ideas about Monroe’s final hours and possible inconsistencies in the timeline. The claims are more of a “hmm” than a bomb.
The mystery of Marilyn Monroe: the unheard of tapes
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
