The story of Marilyn, the tragic starlet who struggled to overcome a difficult childhood, who had a string of failed marriages and battled addiction, is well known. Marilyn, Misunderstood tells the story of the other Marilyn. A woman who didn’t just suddenly wake up and become the biggest star in the world. The other Marilyn was a bold and ambitious trailblazer, a striver who refused to toe the line, and who never stopped fighting to be taken seriously as an actress. The documentary pieces together this version of Marilyn’s life story through interviews with some of her friends and colleagues. They reveal that she may have been blonde, but she was not dumb. In their words, though she may have been victimised at times, she was not the tragic victim history has made her out to be. The Marilyn Monroe who emerges from their stories is more rounded – a brave, complex, brilliant, funny, outspoken and ambitious woman, who blazed a trail for the generations of women who followed her.
