Living: The Manufacture of Marilyn

Monroemania is worldwide, and tacky tributes proliferate

Marilyn Monroe occupies an unquiet grave. The 20th anniversary of her death has set off a worldwide orgy of necrolatry. While she continues to inspire plays, books and lyrics, the beautiful blond whom Norman Mailer called "the sweet angel of sex" is being all but drowned in a flood of tacky tribute. Boutiques and stores from San Francisco to Rome have found an apparently inexhaustible market for such mementos as life-size cardboard stand-ups, 3-D posters, calendars, bed sheets, shopping bags, masks, hot-water bottles ("Take me to bed....

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