Review: My Week with Marilyn

My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to the audiobook version of “My Week with Marilyn”, and was surprised to find there was a second book included with the first. That second book, “The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me” was the original diary of Colin Clark covering his six months working on the Marilyn Monroe movie with Sir Lawrence Olivier as a third assistant director. This second book was about twice as long as the first, which was Clark’s story about working with Monroe written decades after the fact. Listeners and readers will notice that the stories aren’t the same. According to the recent Clark book, he had quite an intimate week with Marilyn. But according to his diaries of the time, there’s no detail remotely similar to the newer story. In fact, events seem to be mixed up in time between the two accounts. The author includes a forward to the diary saying that in his earlier diary he was protecting Monroe, but strangely he includes some details in that earlier diary that you wouldn’t think he would have recorded if protecting Monroe’s integrity and privacy was important, involving nudity and medical conditions, including reporting a miscarriage. The newer book seems to me more a “dream sequence” of Clark’s. If you take him at his word, that he believes both accounts are accurate, then this is a good illustration of the impact of time on memory. Time and celebrity. I found the books interesting in that Clark is an upper class young man in a gopher job, and he shows how he took advantage of his upbringing and especially his connections. Yes, anyone can succeed in the movie world of London, but it helps to have family working for the royals and friends who are knighted actors.

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