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List Price: $22.95 | | Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Salesrank: 235917
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| Our Price: $49.98 |
| Used Price: $13.79 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
Little known and long unavailable, this autobiography, written by actress and starlet Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), describes her early adolescence, her rise in the film industry from bit player to celebrity, and her marriage to Joe DiMaggio.
My Story Reviews:
beautiful work 
2008-07-23 - when reading this book, it was as if i was listening to marilyn's voice telleing me the story....don't freak out....no, i'm not a psycho....i say this because she comes across very honest.
Pleasantly Surprised
2007-03-01 - I never thought of Marilyn Monroe as being a deep, self reflective type of woman. However, this book reveals a side of her that is much more complicated than her public persona and is hidden by her glamour. I thought this book was great, I wish though there were less pictures of her Hollywood persona and more of her past.
marilyn monrroe's story by M.A. Channon 
2006-12-15 - "I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people, one of them was Norma Jean from the orphanage who belonged to nobody. The other was someone whose name I didn't know, I knew where she belonged, she belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world."
-Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in 1926. She was raised by an assortment of families. Each family she ever lived with was paid five dollars a week by her biological mother, the money was to pay for little Norma Jean's food and clothing. She proved to be an assset to the home she lived with because she could do housework. Her mother visited her occasionally. Every time Norma spilled the salt or forgot to wash the dishes, she was sent back to the orphanage until a new family adopted her. When her mother was taken to the insane asylum, she lived with her Aunt Grace between families. One day, when Norma Jean is sixteen, she and her aunt decide that she should get married to avoid having to go to new families all of the time. When she was nineteen, she and her husband divorced and she moved to an apartment in Hollywood t look for work. She made enough money modeling for advertisements and layouts to get by. She got on the payroll t 20th Century Fox, they gave her the name Marilyn Monroe and they told she was going to be a star, but they never hired her for any movies. Then, one day a magazine wrote an article about a calendar she had modeled for years before. Letters began to pour into the studio until, as Ms. Monroe puts it "They had to stop ignoring me." so they put her in a movie and she became a hit. When attending a party that the studio sent her to for publicity, she meets Joe DiMaggio, whom she later marries. Marilyn goes on to star in many movies, she dies in 1962. I really liked this book and I would recommend it to any Marilyn Monroe fan.
One thing that I liked about this book was that she wrote it the way a friend would talk about their life. Marilyn wrote more about her rough childhood rather than each of her individual movies. She talked about life in Hollywood living in poverty, being surrounded by phony agents and young talent unable to find a some work. People judged her for being beautiful, women were always suspicious of her and she couldn't get a real job interview with a man because they were crazy about her looks. She wrote about the strangers' proposals that she turned down. She even wrote about the hopes, dreams and desires she once had that she has now fulfilled
I liked how Monroe cleared up all of the gossip that had always been present in magazines and spread by word of mouth. She did this without an angry or accusatory tone. Often when a celebrity attempts make it known that the gossip isn't true, they go into an angry rant about the press, Monroe did nopt do this. The words were written in a cool, casual manner, almost as if she were look back on it and laughing. Throughout the entire book she conveys a message saying that she is more grown up than people have made her out to be and is still more mature than she once was.
I also liked some of the metaphors and descriptions she used. Some of the metaphors made me laugh but for the most part I got a really good idea of what she was describing. I would have never thought of some of the ways she described objects and situations. She described phony agents as wolves howling in the night for someone to come and work for them.
I did get a little bit confused when she kept referring to past future occurrences. She could be talking about her childhood and refer to marriage to Joe Dimaggio, or dhe could be talking bout a publicity party she went to but refer back to the orphanage she went as a young child
I belive that this is a very good book which speaks the truth and exposes a new side of Marilyn Monroe that is very different from the characters she plays on the screen. Inside are thoughts, hopes, dreams and ghosts of the past.
for the real story finally after over forty years 
2005-09-12 - this was just okay the same old lies once you read here i am mother by nancy miracle the real story censored for so long yopu'll know it all the old hollywood story is over the real one lives see here i am mother by her daughter nancy miracle
Marilyn's Real Story
2005-08-17 - I really enjoyed reading My Story. I admire Marilyn the actress/model, and as I am primarily interested in her life because of the real challenges she faced and overcame, most biographies of her (written by other people) do not interest me.
I think My Story may have been part publicity stunt, part accurate portrayal of the star's beginnings, but this is probably the closest thing we will ever get to a personal account of her life story. At least we know that she had some hand in writing it. The editor admits that the book was cut short as Marilyn left the manuscript unfinished. Her career, at the point that the book leaves off, was at its peak: she had just married Joe DiMaggio and was preparing to entertain the troops in Korea.
At least the reader can glean some truths about Marilyn's life before her fame. I do not think that the first-person, sensitive description of her experiences as a budding young woman and courageous tenacity in the face of struggles could be entirely fabricated. This is the picture of Marilyn that few would believe, or would want to see. The real loneliness and self-awareness cultivated by a sole struggle for love and notoriety is at the heart of her accounts. Touching passages describe her unique mix of ambition, courage, and Achilles-heel insecurity; there is a traumatic description of what happened when a police officer followed her home and attempted to rape her (an event that was later subject to sensational rewrites); she has to set internal lines and limits as numerous men attempted to exploit her in exchange for a shot at mostly non-existent "movie opportunities".
For a long time, the public has been fed the glamorized image of Marilyn as the sex icon, the tragic actress, the most famous golden-era Hollywood starlet. In my opinion this short book represents the diamond-in-the-rough version of Marilyn's life- before she was "Marilyn", before the waif became the star, and the legend became the myth.
