Marilyn Monroe

The Biography

By: Donald Spoto

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Fifty years after her death, Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe still beguiles the world, her image enthralling millions. Many books have attempted to explain her allure and tell her story, but none has succeeded as well as this work by acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto.

Spoto’s exhaustive research uncovers a conspiracy of silence, allowing him to present the facts, free from often-repeated myths and speculation. Granted access to more than thirty-five thousand pages of formerly sealed files containing letters, diaries, appointment books, and other intimate papers, he also interviewed nearly two hundred people who had never before spoken on record. From the papers of Marilyn’s psychiatrist and her medical files to recently declassified government documents, the truth emerges and provides a moving, often shocking picture of the real Marilyn Monroe - including her connection to the Kennedys and the bizarre, horrifying truth about how she really died.

©1993 Donald Spoto (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This is a book that wound up teaching me a great deal about Hollywood, the social history of California, the movie business, the trials of female actors in American show business, and the life of a woman who has been so mythologized that often the real woman is obscured from actual view." (Erica Jong for Washington Post Book World)

"Spoto has given Monroe the treatment she deserves. At last she emerges not as a goddess but as a human being in this extraordinary volume." ( Daily Telegraph)

"Provocative!" ( Entertainment Weekly)

This is the definitive bio you’re looking for

Thorough and engaging. Impressed with the level of detail and implementation of sources. A must listen.

One the best written on her

They put a lot of research into this one. I think the house keeper did it after reading this one

Anna Fields is Greatly Missed

Great Narrator!!! So sorry she is gone. She was a great reader, wonderful voice. The book itself was good too.

A heart-wrenching tale about needing to be loved

This biography is nothing short of utterly tragic. It's the classic ideal that someone receives them self is never good enough when if that was true then we wouldn't be talking about her for so long. Although sad and short life was, it's obvious people did love her and still do.

Amazing biography

I feel so upset that so much of her legacy was eventually ruined by conspiracists and liars. So sad to think that Eunice and Greenson were never held responsible for her death, that with the evidence of the autopsy and their own false testimonies, seem solely responsible for.