An exceptional audience attended the premiere of the play Too Blonde to Be Believed, starring Melania Giglio as Marilyn Monroe and directed by Daniele Salvo, running at the Teatro Manzoni (Rome) through March 22. In the audience were, among others, Pierfrancesco Pingitore, Alessandro Cecchi Paone, Metis Di Meo, and Piji Siciliani.
One hundred years after the birth of the ethereal femme fatale par excellence, the story of Marilyn Monroe resonates powerfully once again: a tale of success and torment, of fame pursued and love sought with obstinacy. Her story paints the portrait of a woman who tried until the very end to assert herself, yet managed to show the world only a part of her true identity. Even today, in fact, Marilyn remains a universal icon of beauty and sensuality, while her most intimate and professional dimensions all too often remain in the background.
Too Blonde to Be Believed is an intense and previously unpublished account dedicated to Norma Jeane, beginning with the final years of the actress’s life. The narrative unfolds through the memories of Joe DiMaggio, still haunted by his own obsessions and the ghosts of a lost love. Alongside him appears photographer Milton H. Greene, the diva’s friend and confidant, perhaps the only one capable of looking beyond the myth and recognizing the woman behind the image.
The show thus reconstructs the figure of the Hollywood star through the two male figures who knew and loved her more than anyone else. “The contrast between the public and private woman is the beating heart of our creation,” stated director Daniele Salvo, a longtime collaborator—along with Melania Giglio—of Gigi Proietti at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre.
The artistic duo Salvo–Giglio has long been a hallmark of quality in the Italian theater scene: two professionals capable of blending acting and music within the language of musical theater. In this portrait of the woman some have called “the cinema’s miracle,” the most famous songs from Marilyn’s repertoire are also featured, performed live by Melania Giglio and interwoven with the story of the diva’s private life.
Alongside the myth, however, her fragility also emerges: personal problems, perhaps fueled by professional ones, and the emotional wounds Marilyn carried with her since childhood. The mood swings, the hospitalizations, the constant feeling of living in a “world of wolves.”
“You have to learn to be among wolves to earn a minute of respect, not love. Otherwise, you end up in trouble,” says Marilyn in one of the show’s most intense moments.
The play also highlights the humiliations she endured in the film industry, her three divorces, the abuse, and her private sorrows, including miscarriages. Marilyn’s biography thus appears as a sequence of wounds accumulated since birth. A story that, in some respects, resembles a modern Cinderella fairy tale: a woman on a perpetual search for her prince.
Yet Marilyn could have had any man. She had everything and nothing at the same time: perhaps because she was fragile in handling such an extraordinary destiny, or because the men she met were unable to truly love her for who she was.
