Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon.
Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe presents the actress in a startling new light.
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about Hollywood, believing that acting would be her one-way ticket to happiness. Her dream was so powerful that she transformed herself into the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, and her image has been branded into the collective consciousness. Men lusted after her, and women wanted to be her. All her life, she just wanted to be loved.
Told through 100 captivating snapshots, we are thrown into the glamorous but dangerous world of old Hollywood. We see a young Marilyn navigating the highs and lows of the studio system as she attempts to free herself from the constraints of Twentieth Century-Fox. We also go behind the scenes of her marriages to teenage sweetheart Jim Dougherty, baseball star Joe DiMaggio and famous playwright Arthur Miller. We hear the voices of friends, lovers – and enemies.
We hear of the friendships she formed with poets, philosophers, playwrights and political activists, and the years spent training with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
In the concluding chapters, Andrew Wilson unpicks what happened on the night Marilyn died after a suspected drug overdose. Were the Kennedys involved, or was she just let down by those closest to her?
I Wanna Be Loved By You is a revealing and nuanced portrait of the life, death and afterlife of an icon who still fascinates us today.
About the Author
Andrew Wilson is an award-winning biographer, novelist and journalist. In 2003, his first book, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (Bloomsbury) won an Edgar Allan Poe Award and the LAMBDA Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Since then he has written the biographies Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex (Bloomsbury), currently being developed for TV/film; Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (Simon & Schuster), which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week; Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin (Simon & Schuster), optioned by Damian Jones and Pathé; and the group biography, Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived (Simon & Schuster).
His 2007 psychological thriller The Lying Tongue was shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel award. In 2017, he published A Talent for Murder (Simon & Schuster), the first book in a series of crime novels featuring Agatha Christie as sleuth. The other novels in the series are A Different Kind of Evil (2018), Death in a Desert Land (2019) and I Saw Him Die (2020). The novels are published by Simon & Schuster in the UK and US, and in numerous territories around the world. Andrew is also the author of the psychological thrillers Five Strangers and Murder Grove (HarperFiction),which he wrote under the name E. V. Adamson. He is a tutor on the Faber Academy crime course and a mentor on the Gold Dust creative writing scheme. He is also a judge for the 2021 Costa Biography Prize.
His journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Tatler, Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Smithsonian and the Washington Post. He is a frequent broadcaster and has appeared on BBC Front Row, Great Lives, Woman’s Hour, the Today programme and Sky News.
Industry Reviews
‘Wilson is sober, alert and empathetic . . . [The book] untangles plenty of mysteries’
– The Times, Book of the Week
‘The definitive account’
– Angela Allen, script supervisor on The Misfits
‘Wilson brings Marilyn Monroe’s story to life with clarity and compassion, offering readers a fuller, more human understanding of her – beyond the myths. It’s an easy, page-turning read and a must for anyone wanting a meaningful overview of Marilyn Monroe’s life, especially as we reflect on her enduring legacy 100 years on. I truly cannot recommend this book highly enough’
– Suzie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe entertainer
