Sexy, clever, touching and coloured by amazing performances, My Week With Marilyn is the perfect way to kick off our 2012 season, and we like it so much, we think it’s perfect for Valentines Day too.
In the summer of 1956 Marilyn Monroe travelled to England to star alongside stage legend Sir Laurence Olivier in his film The Prince and The Showgirl. Although accompanied by her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, and a band of minders, Marilyn was ill-at-ease on set and struggled with Olivier’s direction. Her predilection for turning up late and in a state of doubt drove Olivier to despair, and his brashness only further fuelled her anxiety.
Enter the 23 year-old third assistant director Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make it in the film business. When after one of their moments, Olivier asks Colin to check up on Marilyn, Marilyn finds someone she can trust and manipulate, and Colin finds someone he can fall completely in love with. Nearly 40 years on, his diary account The Prince, the Showgirl and Me was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as My Week With Marilyn. This film is the story of that week. With Arthur Miller having left England, the coast became clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
