TCM Star of the Month June 2026: Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe, remembered for a scene in The Seven Year Itch (June 15, 10:00 PM)

We're into the month of June now, and that means it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time around, that's Marilyn Monroe, as today is her 100th birth anniversary. Monroe's films will be airing on the first four Monday nights in June, with the final Monday, June 29, being given over the a "Pride" film festival (and I've got a film for that day already).

Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant in Monkey Business (June 1, 11:30 PM)

Now, Monroe famously died young, so she didn't make all that many movies, which means that unlke some other Stars of the Month, the films only take up part of the evening/overnight lineup. Tonight, for example, sees Armored Car Robbery at 2:45 AM after the final Monroe film, her debut performance in Ladies of the Chorus. And, she did a lot of her work at Fox, which probably also limited how many movies TCM was able to get the rights to, as River of No Return and All About Eve are not here along with some of the other stuff she did early in her career at Fox before How to Marry a Millionaire and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes really made her a big star by 1953.

It's not a big role, but Marilyn Monroe was clearly in The Asphalt Jungle (June 8, 11:30 PM)

After tonight's first night, the movies are relatively chronological, in that June 8 is from the early 1950s; June 15 is the middle of the decade, and June 22 the end of the 1950s and, well, Monroe's final film, The Misfits from 1961. But at only 13 films, it's not a whole lot.

At least they included Some Like It Hot (June 22, 8:00 PM)

Ladies of the Chorus

Tonight's lineup on TCM includes a movie that only gets seen because of the presence of a very young Marilyn Monroe: Ladies of the Chorus, at 11:00 PM.

Monroe plays Peggy Martin, one of the chorus girls who is the daughter of Mae Martin (Adele Jergens, nominally the star here). Mae was at one point the star of the show, but she aged out of stardom and is back in the chorus, not having married well. An argument ensues that sees the star of the show leave in a huff, and Peggy getting named to be the new star.

Coming into the club one night is Randy Carroll (Rand Brooks), one of those playboys who dotted movies of the 1930s but seems like time has passed him by now that it's 1948 -- times were changing fast after World War II. But Randy sees Peggy in the show, and immediately falls in love. Of course, there's a problem in that Peggy is just a showgirl, and Mom tells her that the likelihood of it working out is low.

However, Randy still loves Peggy and plans to introduce her to his mother, oddly enough named Adele (Nana Bryant). Eventually the time comes for Peggy to be introduced to all of high society, and that's where you'd expect the problem once all the other "good" rich people find out Peggy was a show girl. But Mrs. Carroll has something to say about that.

There's not much in this 61-minute B movie from Columbia. In fact, as I watched it, I found myself thinking that this is the sort of movie that a decade earlier would have made a nice two-reeler for one of the studios. There's the bare bones of a story; Peggy can do one production number at the club; and then there would be the big production number wrapping things up as Peggy and Randy get to live happily ever after. But with shorts becoming less of a thing after World War II, Columbia stretched it out to that hour.

It's not exactly a bad movie; it's more that Ladies of the Chorus is a movie that came at the wrong time. And if Marilyn Monroe hadn't gone on to bigger things, nobody would remember this movie, much like all the other B movies that aren't part of the Turner library.

The Prince and the Showgirl

I haven't done a post on The Prince and the Showgirl before, so when it showed up on the TCM schedule recently I made a point of DVRing it to watch and do a post here.

The scene is London, 1911. Edward VII had died the previous year, leaving George V to become the new monarch. But the official coronation with all the pageantry isn't held right when the old monarch dies, as it takes time to bring in all the other crowned heads of state to attend the coronation. Among them is the royal family of Carpathia (not of course a real state, but part of modern-day Romania and Hungary in the northern part of the Balkans). They have a king in Nicholas VIII (Jeremy Spenser), but he's still only 16 so he won't ascend to the throne until he's 18, with his father the Grand Duke (Laurence Olivier) being regent, not being king himself because he only married into the family. The British Foreign Office sends envoy Northbrook (Richard Wattis) to make certain the Regent's stay in London is pleasant, because there's a dicey political situation in Carpathia.

The Regent having been in a marriage of convenience and now being a widower is perfectly comfortable seeing women, at least insofar as royal protocal will let him. In London, he plans to meet the star of an American revue, The Coconut Girl. But when he meets the cast, it's actually one of the chorus girls he winds up desiring, young Elsie from Milwaukee (Marilyn Monroe). He invites her back to the embassy for dinner, and Northbrook reluctantly goes along despite Elsie being American (the European disdain for American bluntness being on display here) and her not knowing anything about royal protocol.

The Regent plans to have dinner alone with Elsie, which is not what she expected at all. While the two are alone, the Regent starts discussing the Carpathian political situation on the phone, not realizing Elsie is really smarter than you'd think at first site. The Regent is of Hungarian descent, so not much of a fan of the Kaiser. Nicholas, however, is of German descent, and is thinking seriously of moving Carpathia closer to Germany politically when he takes the throne. He also cavorts with reformers whom his father doesn't like and even imprisons. To secure his hold, Dad has told the switchboard operator at the embassy not to let Nicholas receive or make any phone calls.

None of this should really matter to Elsie, but she winds up getting more involved in the Carpathian situation mainly because everybody in the royal family seems to like her. The Queen Dowager (Sybil Thorndike) lets her stay as a temporary lady-in-waiting, allowing her to attend the coronation and events surrounding it. It also lets her get involved in the spat between father and son, and she decides to try to patch things up as a family affair as much as a political matter.

The Prince and the Showgirl wasn't an easy production, as documented in the film My Week With Marilyn from the beginning of this decade. Olivier directed as well as starred, and he was none too happy with Monroe. To be fair, she did have a reputation for being difficult. But to be fair, a bigger problem is with Olivier's performance, making the Regent look like a man you'd wonder what anybody would see in him. Instead of trying to rein in Marilyn, he should have been rening himself in.

The movie certainly looks nice in terms of sets and costumes, with the mockup of Westminster Abbey looking particularly good. However, that scene looks out of place with the action of the rest of the movie.

All in all, The Prince and the Showgirl isn't a bad movie, but it's also not the first thing I'd suggest to introduce people to either Olivier or Monroe. It's available on DVD too.

There's No Business Like Show Business

Another movie that it's time for me to get off my DVR to make room for something else is the early Cinemascope musical, There's No Business Like Show Business.

Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey play Molly and Terrance Donahue, a husband and wife who in 1919 are going around the country performing in vaudeville as the Two Donahues. Well, at the end of the act they bring out their son for a cameo and call the act the Three Donahues. Time passes, and the act becomes The Four Donahues, and then the Five Donahues. But a life on the road is no place for the children, and Molly wants them in a school.

A long time passes, and now it's the late 1930s, the three Donahue children are all grown up, more or less, and they knew they'd rather be on the stage than in a stuffy Catholic school. Son Timothy (Donald O'Connor) dances along with his sister Katy (Mitzi Gaynor) while the other son Steve (Johnnie Ray) sings a mean tune. And the family has made it big, performing at the Hippodrome in New York.

One night after the show, Tim goes out to a club where he meets hat-check girl Vicky (Marilyn Monroe) with whom he immediately falls in love. Why wouldn't he? It's Marilyn Monroe, after all. But she has dreams of becoming big, and a little guy like Tim is just going to get in the way. Not that she's mean per se; she already has a meeting with a big impresario set up and Tim is just being a jerk.

More time passes, Vicky becomes a success, and for her new show, somebody suggests the Donahues. Tim and Vicky meet again, and although she could fall in love with him, it's going to be a rocky road getting there. You probably know the story, having seen it from a hunderd movies. Other things threaten to break up the act, such as Katy getting married, and Steve deciding to take the priestly vows.

There's No Business Like Show Business is a movie with a well-worn plot, although it's serviceable enough. As a result, the success of such a movie depends on the quality of the music and the performers. Dan Dailey, not to be confused with Dan Duryea, a heavy of the same period, made a lot of light movies at Fox and is one of those people who could always be relied upon to give a dependable performance, if nothing spectacular. Mitzi Gaynor's dancing shows a lot of talent, although she's one of the more minor characters. Ethel Merman is a force to be reckoned with. A little of her goes a long way, and there's a lot of her here. And the lest said about Johnnie Ray, the better. I'm of the age where I remember him better from the reference in the 1980's song "Come on Eileen". I can't stand his singing style, and he couldn't act a bit.

The music is by Irving Berlin, and as with his earlier Alexander's Ragtime Band, there's a lot of it. I'd say that this time, there might actually be a bit too much of it. There's a version of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" early on before Steve joins the priesthood with all five Donahues doing a rendition. It goes on, and on, and on, almost the point of tedium.

Overall, I'd say that There's No Business Like Show Business is definitely worth a watch. Whether you'll want to watch it more than once depends on whether you like the genre.

Marilyn Monroe would have been 90 today

Marilyn Monroe with Louis Calhern in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Marilyn Monroe was born on this date in 1926, so why not post some of the pictures I've used of her to illustrate some of my blog posts over the past eight years? Monroe didn't have a particularly big part in The Asphalt Jungle, but I used that one at the top of the post just because it is in some ways so emblematic of Monroe's beauty. The one at left is with Richard Widmark in Don't Bother to Knock, one of her early starring roles at Fox. In fact, I think it's her first starring role at Fox; she had been a supporting player or used in anthologies in her earlier movies

Of course, Monroe's eventual fame and being more remembered than the other Fox stars of the decade means that she's the one who gets to grace the DVD covers, because they'll think more people will buy the DVDs that way if they think they're getting a Marilyn Monroe movie. Such is the case with Love Nest, which is actually a June Haver/William Lundigan movie, but then neither of them had the charisma Marilyn had. (And William certainly didn't have the looks.)

It's tough to say which movie is the definitive Marilyn Monroe movie, since the scene of her dress being blown up by a grate from The Seven Year Itch might be the most memorable single image, while Some Like It Hot is probably the single best movie she made.

Marilyn Monroe photo exhibition

If anybody is lucky enough to be in Poland in the next couple of weeks, here's an interesting item I heard on podcast from Radio Poland's English service. Apparently, some American who wound up in a fraud case in Poland a decade or two ago had a collection of vintage Hollywood photos which he used as an asset to pay off the debts to Poland in the fraud case. So, a museum in Poland has wound up with this collection of a couple thousand photos. That museum is putting a couple dozen on display, specifically a couple of dozen taken of Marilyn Monroe during the shooting of Bus Stop. If you're in the Polish city of Wrocław, the exhibition is on until March 24.

The official site for the exhibit, at least in English, is here, I believe.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is airing on TCM tonight at 8:00 PM as part of a night of movies starring Jane Russell. According to a search of the blog, I've never done a full-length post on it before, so now might be a good time to do it. I've said before that I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, but this is one where the plot is good enough to make the movie worth watchign. That, and it's actually got one or two interesting musical numbers.

Marilyn Monroe stars as Lorelei Lee, a nightclub singer who's engaged to Gus Esmond Jr. (Tommy Noonan). Lorelei is the sort of person who wants the finer things in life, and so has wanted to marry a rich guy like Gus. Gus' father, however, isn't so sure that it would be a good thing for his son to marry a chorus girl. So when Gus Jr. sends Lorelei and her best friend Dorothy Shaw (that's Jane Russell) to Paris on a transatlantic liner with a letter of credit, Dad hires the private detective Ernie Malone (Elliott Reed) to get the dirt on Lorelei. Dorothy, for her part, is there to try to prevent any dirt from happening.

The results are somewhat predictable. Needless to say there are a whole bunch of people on board interested in Lorelei and Dorothy. They're really more interested in Lorelei because Dorothy is more open about her desire for a millionaire: she wants one she can love first. Lorelei doesn't necessarily want to hurt men; she just wants those diamonds. So a whole bunch of people wind up portrayed as potentially upsetting Lorelei's relationship with Gus, chief among them being "Piggy", real name Sir Francis Beekman (Charles Coburn). He's got diamonds, but they're on a wife. The other predictable part is that Ernie the detective falls in love with Dorothy along the way to Paris, which is definitely going to complicate matters.

The ocean liner eventually makes it to Paris, and Gus Jr. has heard about what's gone on on the boat, so he's cancelled the letter of credit, leaving our two singers stranded without cash or a job. The job is easy to get, and as for the cash, there are still a bunch of millionaires around. But Gus shows up to try to reconcile with Lorelei, and Lady Beekman's jewels go missing with Lorelei and Dorothy being among the subjects....

As I said, the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is predictable and nothing groundbreaking. But Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are both quite entertaining in their portrayals of the two singers, making the movie entertaining if it were just a romantic comedy. It's a musical, though, and there are a couple of numbers of note. Everybody connects Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Monroe's performance of the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", which she does in a very pink scene. But there's another song to look out for, which Russell gets early on in the film. In "Anyone Here For Love?", Russell performs among the men of the US Olympic Team, who are on the ship on their way to the games. It's only the men, and I don't think any of them is wearing more than a pair of those skimpy shorts that people wore to do sports back in those days. No wonder there's a stereotype of musical theater being a haven for gay men.

The TCM Shop only seems to list one pricy, but big (15 films) box set available for purchase, while Amazon lists several DVD releases that all seem to be out of print.

Let's Make Love

One of the movies that's in the FMC/FXM rotation currently is Let's Make Love. It's airing twice this week: at 10:45 AM Tuedsay (March 25) and again at 8:00 AM Wednesday. (It'll also be airing again at the beginning of April.) It's also gotten a release to DVD, so even if you can't catch the FMC airings, you can still watch it.

Yves Montand plays Jeam-Marc Clement, the latest in a long line of French entrepreneurs. The family has been successful through the generations, to the point that Clement is a dollar billionaire, which is a lot in 1960 dollars. Unfortunately, he's also become a bit of a playboy, still not having a wife and any children to be his heirs and carry on the family businesses. Worse, is that his behavior has made it to the tabloids. Not only that, but his PR man Alexander (Tony Randall), who used to work on Broadway in New York, has learned that there's an off-Broadway production doing a parody of modern fame, and including Jean-Marc in that parody. This is unacceptable, and must be stopped!

So everybody decamps to New York City, where Alexander can use his Broadway connections to see what's going on with the new show mocking Jean-Marc, and see if anything can be done to stop it. Alexander and Jean-Marc go to the theater where rehearsals are being held, and the director quickly mistakes Jean-Marc for a would-be actor, which is forgivable since he's with Alexander who used to do PR for Broadway stars. Furthermore, it turns out that Jean-Marc can do an excellent version of this playboy the director is tryin gto spoof, and even bears somewhat of a resemblance to him; this is again forgivable since when the director asks Jean-Marc to say a few lines, he's of course imitating himself. They're willing to give him the part, but they don't believe him when they ask him for his name, which he claims is Jean-Marc Clement. So now Jean-Marc has to go under an assumed name, making things more complicated.

That's not the only thing complicating matters for him. There's also the lead actress in the play, Amanda Dell (Marilyn Monroe). Jean-Marc falls for her, but she's got night school and a somewhat boyfriend in Tony (Frankie Vaughan), an up-an-coming singer for whom this would be a big break. Amanda, however, begins to fall for this poor naïve actor with a French accent, not knowing that he is in fact a billionair. And that's a good thing since she doesn't like the snooty rich. (She shouldn't fall in love with saxophone players, either, but she's not very bright.) Meanwhile, there's the matter of keeping the show from lampooning Jean-Marc. His advisors have been getting busy on getting subsidiaries owned by Clement to get a controlling interest in the show and close it down, but Jean-Marc has pangs of conscience in that there are these people who have jobs and for whom this is the difference between eating and not eating.

The story itself is a bit lightweight. It seems like the logical conclusion for everybody to reach is for Jean-Marc and Amanda to wind up together, with her dislike of the rich overcome. but the way the story gets to the end is a bit abrupt. FMC, the last time I watched it, was putting this movie in a two-hour slot, and as the minutes ticked by the story seemed to be introducing more plot twists, rather than unraveling them in a satisfying denouement. Montand also seems a bit out of place when he's playing Jean-Marc playing an actor, although that may be deliberate in that the characer really isn't supposed to fit in.

There are some genuinely funny moments, however. One involves Jean-Marc trying to impress the rest of the theater company by telling them a new joke, so he buys one from a comedy writer, only for it to backfire. Later, in order to figure out what it is that Amanda finds charming in men, Jean-Marc hires Milton Berle to teach him comic timing; Gene Kelly to teach him how to dance; and Bing Crosby to teach him how to sing. Jean-Marc isn't quite capable of any of them.

Overall, Let's Make Love is a movie that's certainly not the best that Marilyn MOnroe did, but also not as bad as many of the reviews on a site like IMDb make it out to be. It's certainly worth a viewing on a rainy day, if not a movie you should go out of your way to see.

Jean Peters, 1926-2000

Today marks the birth anniversary of actress Jean Peters, who was born on this date in 1926. She started her career at Fox in the late 1940s with the Tyrone Power vehicle Captain From Castile, and apparently only signed one of those standard seven-year studio contracts: her credits list seven years' worth of movies, and then she left Hollywood. Perhaps her best role is in Pickup on South Street, but this isn't one of those posts for listing a bunch of her movies with links to the blog posts I've done on them. By a fortuitous streak of serendipity, what's left of the Fox Movie Channel has one of her films on their schedule: As Young As You Feel, early tomorrow morning at 4:40 AM.

Peters isn't exactly the star of this movie; she only plays Alice Hodges, the granddaughter of John Hodges (Monty Woolley, who is the star of the film) and fiancée of Joe (David Wayne), who is the personnel manager at the plant. As I said, this is a movie about the grandfather character. He's 65 years old, and works at a local print shop that's run by some conglomerate in the big city, one of those places where nobody in the corporate office really knows what's going on at a smaller print shop like this. (Shades of the later Solid Gold Cadillac.) As I said, John Hodges has turned 65, and this movie was made in 1951, in the days when a lot of companies pensioned off their workers when they hit 65, whether they liked it or not. And dammit, John doesn't like it! What's an old man to do? He guesses that if nobody from the head office knows what's going on at this small subsidiary, then nobody at the local subsidiary is going to recognize anybody from the local head office. So Hodges disguises himself as the CEO of the corporation and visits the plant; when he "learns" about the mandatory retirement rule, he immediately rescinds it, allowing Hodges to go back to the work that he likes and is good at. Problem solved, right?

Of course not! Or, to put it more accuartely, like one of those cartoons where the characters try to hide stuff under the carpet, only for this bulge to show up that keeps moving every time they try to tamp it down, solving this problem causes other problems. John thought nobody was going to recgnize him, and he was almost right. The problem is, the one person who did recognize him is his soon-to-be grandson-in-law, who has to do something about this. Nobody believes him, though, and Hodges gets to keep playing the CEO. He gets invited to his boss' house (Albert Dekker), at which point the boss' wife (Constance Bennett) decides that she prefers the CEO to her husband and is thinking of filing for divorce! And if that's not bad enough, word eventually gets through to the corporate head office about what's happened, but that's as a result of Hodges-as-CEO giving a stirring speech about business policy, saying things the head office can't possibly renege on.

As Young as You Feel is enjoyable stuff, if nothing particularly earth-shattering. It's not even as tough on business as The Solid Gold Cadillac, and that wasn't particularly hard-hitting compared to what we would start getting in the 1960s and 1970s. Monty Woolley is great, and helped out by a supporting cast that generally does quite well. Thelma Ritter plays his daughter-in-law, while Marilyn Monroe, in one of her first films at Fox, plays Dekker's secretary. It's a small role, but since it's Marilyn Monroe, it's enough to have gotten the movie released to DVD with her phoot on the cover as though she were the star. (On the plus side, I suppose the movie would never have gotten a DVD release if it weren't for Monroe.)

More young Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe appeared in The Asphalt Jungle at MGM, before starting her several year stint at Fox, where she made most of her most famous films apart from Some Like It Hot. Sadly, The Asphalt Jungle isn't showing up on TCM any time soon. TCM, however, has been able to get the rights to one of Monroe's smaller roles from earlier in her career at Fox, that being Monkey Business, which is airing this evening at 6:00 PM. Monroe only plays a secretary to pharmecutical company president Charles Coburn. The star is Cary Grant, a chemist who discovers an elixir that makes him (or anybody who takes it) act inappropriately young for a while, until the elixir wears off. Monroe gets a car scene with Cary Grant, as well as an argument scene with young-acting Ginger Rogers.

(Unrelated to Monroe, but related to TCM and Fox, they've also gotten the rights to Cheaper By the Dozen, airing at 4:15 PM. Clifton Webb plays an "efficiency expert" who, together with wife Myrna Loy, raises a family of a dozen kids.)

What's left of the Fox Movie Channel is also running some of Monroe's early work. Tomorrow morning at 7:40 AM, they're showing Let's Make It Legal, a movie I first recommended back in May, 2011. That's followed at 9:00 AM by We're Not Married, a film which is rather better than Let's Make It Legal.

Time for a Marilyn Monroe box set?

Tomorrow on TCM's Summer Under the Stars brings 24 hours of Marilyn Monroe pictures. Monroe is one of those people who has become an icon, so it's not surprising that studios would use her image to sell DVDs, even in films where she wasn't high up in the billing. It's something I've mentioned before in conjunction with the piffling Fox film Love Nest, which doesn't happen to be part of tomorrow's Marilyn Monroe day, but is unsurprisingly availble on DVD with Monroe's face splashed all over the cover.

In fact, only one of tomorrow's movies on TCM is not available on DVD, which is Clash By Night (airing at 8:00 AM tomorrow), in which Monroe has a smaller role as the girlfriend of Barbara Stanwyck's brother (Keith Andes); the movie is really about Stanwyck, the man she marries (Paul Douglas), and the rough man she falls in love with (Robert Ryan). I find it somewhat surprising that TCM claims it's not on DVD, since it's got Stanwyck and Marilyn Monroe, and was made at RKO, whose films are now under the control of Warner Bros. That means Warner Bros. could very easily release it as part of the Warner Archive. In fact, Warner Bros. released a DVD several years ago, but it's apparently out of print.

Clash By Night would be a good selection for part of a Monroe box set in those four-film "Legends" DVD box sets that you see advertised on TCM between movies, such as the current Kirk Douglas box set. The only condition would be that there are four films that are part of the Warner library, and I believe there are. In addition to Clash By Night, there's The Asphalt Jungle (tomorrow at 6:00 AM) which was made at MGM, and The Prince and the Showgirl which was made in Britain by Warner Bros. For the fourth movie, a restoration of Home Town Story might be in order. Monroe has a smaller role as a receptionist, but this is one of those MGM Bs from the early 1950s when Dore Schary was trying to be socially relevant. Inexplicably, they let the copyright run out, soe it entered the public domain and is cheaply available from all over the place.

Claudette Colbert, join the club

Joining the list of older actresses who got some lousy roles later in their careers, you can watch the normally entertainng Claudette Colbert in the not very good Let's Make It Legal, tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM o nthe Fox Movie Channel.

Colbert plays Miriam, a wife who's about to get a divorce from her husband Hugh (Macdonald Carey), in part because he's a compulsive gambler, and in part because he's an utter drip. If you thought Michael Rennie was boring in Teenage Rebel, he's got nothing on Carey. Miriam lives with her daughter Barbara (Barbara Bates) and son-in-law Jerry (Robert Wagner), who works for... Hugh, at the hotel Hugh managaes. Oh dear. Anyhow, there's only 24 hours until the divorce decree is final, and everybody but Hugh can live happily ever after.

That is, until wealthy Victor (Zachary Scott) comes back to town. He just happened to be Miriam's high-school sweetheart, and when he discovers that Miriam is about to become a divorcée, he begins to put the moves on Miriam again. Jerry would love this, as it means his mother-in-law would move in with a new husband, and Jerry and Barbara would be able to live on their own, as all young couples ought to do. Barbara, on the other hand, loves having Mother do things for her, and would even be OK with Mom and Dad getting back together. Victor, meanwhile, has his status to worry about; he's reminiscent of Wallace Beery's character in Dinner At Eight in that he's made a lot of money and is being asked to go to Washington to work for the government. So, he wants to marry Miriam as soon as possible, before there's any controversy.

You can probably guess where all this is going to end up, and frankly, it's not for the better that the film is so predictable. On top of that, the characters aren't particularly likeable. Finally, the whole thing comes across as contrived and forced, which makes it not so funny.

Let's Make It Legal has gotten a DVD release, however. That's probably because of the presence in the cast of one Marilyn Monroe. As with Love Nest last month, Monroe only has a small part, here playing a woman at the hotel who wants to get introduced to a rich guy like Victor, even though he has no interest in her. Still, her presence makes for an easy way to advertise the movie now.

Revisionist history with Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe became one of the icons of the 1950s for fairly obvious reasons. One of the results of this is that there are some movies out there that get billed as being Marilyn Monroe films and her presence in the cast is used as a selling point for the DVD. Such is the case with Love Nest, which is airing tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM ET on the Fox Movie Channel. Although that's Monroe on the cover, she's really only billed fourth, and doesn't have that big a role.

The top billing here actually goes to June Haver. She plays Connie Scott, the wife of an Army man about to come home from the war. Connie needed a way to make money, so she put all of the couple's savings into a mortgage on a New York City apartment building, and figures that she and her husband will be able to live off the rents from the tenants, while her husband Jim (William Lundigan) gets his writing career going again. If Connie had been smart, she would have watched movies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and realized that buying a fixer-upper is a terrible idea. But all their savings is tied up in the place, and they have to make a go of it.

Love Nest is only partly about the struggles the couple has keeping the apartment building going as a business; there are two other back stories going on at the same time. One involves the Monroe character. Her character is named Roberta, nicknamed Bobbie. Bobbie was a WAC during the war, and it was oh-so-convenient for Jim to refer to her as "Bobbie" in his letters home to Connie, leading her to believe Bobbie was a man. Once Connie finds out Bobbie was a woman, she naturally suspects that Jim has a romantic involvement for Bobbie. Jim and Connie's lawyer friend Ed (Jack Paar), however, has no woman at home to worry about, and is free to pursue Bobbie.

The other story involves Charley Patterson (Frank Fay), one of the tenants. We first see him leaving another apartment where he's passing himself off as a mining engineer with a different name (and a whole slew of business cards with different names on them). When he gets to the Scotts' building, he claims he's Charley, an estate appraiser. In fact he's a con artist who makes his money off of unsuspsecting old ladies who have more money than they know what to do with it, and nobody to do it with. Charley, however, finds himself beginning to fall in love with one of his neighbors at the apartment; she's not somebody he can con simply because she doesn't have the money for it.

Love Nest is a competent, but not particularly memorable movie. Everything works out a bit too neatly at the end, but you have to know going in that things are going to work out. Still, Love Nest is worth a viewing.