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Marilyn Monroe died on August 4, 1962, after overdosing on prescription pills, and it was that particular event which rewrote everything about her. Soon after her untimely death, Monroe’s life turned into a postscript, and her image was permanently tangled with tragedy.
In 1958, four years before Monroe’s death, a film quietly echoed her life without knowing how it would end. The Goddess, directed by John Cromwell and written by Paddy Chayefsky, stepped into the ring with a fictional version of Monroe’s story. It followed a Southern girl named Emily Ann Faulkner, who became a Hollywood star called Rita Shawn.
The story of Emily, played by Kim Stanley, looked and unraveled in ways that mirrored Monroe and the comparisons were too direct to dismiss. Both had unstable mothers, lost fathers, early marriages and a climb to fame that stripped them of peace. Besides, Both transformed from brown-haired girls into blond symbols and to double that up, addictions and loneliness tied their names like shadows.
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Marilyn Monroe in 1953 pic.twitter.com/k7oKqWZUId
— The Best (@Thebestfigen) September 2, 2024
Stanley said the film wasn’t about Monroe, but the match was near perfect. The film split Rita’s life into three sections, dragging her from a neglected child to a woman idolized and then emptied. Her past clung to her at every stage, and no matter where she stood, the echo of being unwanted never left her.
The movie didn’t care about Rita’s career, though. It erased the glamour and focused entirely on personal ruins. Her mother treats her like a burden, her marriages collapse, and her daughter grows up without her. Even Hollywood executives circled her like wolves, and she had no true friends.
Stanley’s performance carried the weight. She delivered Rita as delicate and lost, nearly mimicking Monroe’s charming presence but with a Southern inflection and sharper edges. Sometimes she leaned too far into drama, giving off hints of a Tennessee Williams heroine unraveling in slow motion. According to Far Out Magazine, Stanley knew Monroe and trained near her at the Actor’s Studio, which shows that she clearly drew from that memory.
I watched Kim Stanley in "The Goddess" last night, and I am still thinking about Kim Stanley in "The Goddess" this morning. pic.twitter.com/ugqarJbfZ6
— CinemaCities1978 (@cities1978) June 7, 2023
Even though The Goddess marked Stanley’s first film role, she already had a strong reputation on stage and television. She once led the stage version of Bus Stop, a role Monroe later played on screen but despite the potential, Stanley eventually disowned the film. She blamed Chayefsky for chopping the heart out of it during editing. Director Cromwell agreed as Chayefsky had little experience cutting a film, but insisted on final say. Subsequently, the result disappointed everyone involved.
Stanley was particularly bitter though. She felt all the lightness had been removed. There was no humor and everything leaned too heavy on suffering. She saw it as a missed chance to show a fuller person and not a cardboard cutout of tragedy.
One of the film’s biggest flaws is its tone. It doesn’t treat Rita’s life as a result of manipulation or exploitation. The people around her aren’t shown as predators or parasites. They’re portrayed as well-meaning, trying to help her while she sinks. Her first husband even returns near the end and becomes ready to bring her back into their daughter’s life but she refuses. He walks away with the child in his arms, framed as a man who saved himself and she is abandoned as a lost cause.
The film seems eager to make a point. Rita chased fame and rejected family, so she lost everything. It eventually reduces her to a warning.
Looking back, The Goddess offers an early attempt to bottle the Monroe myth before it hardened. It reflects how she was viewed in real time and scratches the surface of her pain but never reaches the root. Later films like Blonde dig even deeper into misery, while My Week with Marilyn tries to soften her story, but none have really captured her.
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