REVIEW: Becoming a blond bombshell

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This article was published 26/03/2009 (6324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What woman could possibly be as beautiful as sexy screen siren Marilyn Monroe?

No female should have to be compared, said Sunny Thompson, a musical-theatre performer whose husband, Greg, was pressuring her to don the platinum blond wig of one of Hollywood’s most iconic figures for his one-woman stage biography.

Thompson balked at taking on the role until she was introduced to a chubby, five-foot-tall, brown-haired man named Jimmy James. James was the foremost Marilyn impersonator in the country. If a drag artist could do it, maybe a curvaceous blue-eyed natural blond the same height as Monroe could pull it off.

"He was beautiful," says Thompson during an interview. "He took so much time and detail in re-creating her image. He brought her to life."

James spent a week teaching his Eliza Doolittle to walk and talk like Marilyn. He laboured for eight hours applying her makeup the first time.

"If he says, ‘I don’t think you can do it,’ I’m not doing it,’" says Thompson, 38, who grew up in Grand Rapids, Minn.

James did bestow his blessing and passed the baton of Marilyn impersonation to Thompson, the star of Marilyn: Forever Blonde, which opens tomorrow night at the Muriel Richardson Auditorium as part of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new exhibit Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend. The 80-minute presentation is a blend of the actress’s own words and 15 songs Monroe sang over her film career.

Since opening in front of some of her friends in the middle of old Hollywood in 2007, Thompson has performed Forever Blonde over 175 times for a public endlessly obsessed with the American starlet.

"She died young, forever beautiful," says Thompson. "There are so many myths surrounding her death. We have an insatiable desire to know what happened."

Forever Blonde is set in 1962 during one of her last photo shoots. Monroe is 36, a three-time divorcée and weary of the sex symbol label. She recounts her life story and wonders aloud whether she would do it all over again.

Mr. Blackwell, of Worst Dressed Celebrity list fame, was an early visitor to the show and lauded her for capturing the essence of his old friend.

"He came to my dressing room and said, ‘I felt like I got to be with her one more time,’" recalls Thompson, stylishly dressed all in black with an oversized beret covering much of her platinum tresses.

During her research — she now owns 450 books on Monroe — Thompson was surprised at Marilyn’s wit and her crushing loneliness.

"She didn’t have the family place to go when she needed help, and that was her demise," says Thompson, who grew up as Sonia in a Swedish family.

Thompson doesn’t buy the suicide theory and believes friends in high places in the U.S. government had her killed.

"She was going to talk and she knew a lot," Thompson says. "If she was going to commit suicide, she would have planned it. She was a genius at marketing. She would have known she would be photographed and would have worn makeup and something pretty. I think if we had done it on purpose, it would have been orchestrated."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

 

THEATRE PREVIEW

Marilyn: Forever Blonde

Winnipeg Art Gallery

Opens Friday, to April 12

Tickets: $28-$38